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THE MAGPIE'S NEST

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE SHADOW RIDERS
i2mo. Cloth.

"A great panoramic study of
contemporary civilization . . . one
of the finest cisatlantic novels of
recent years."

Atlantic Monthly.

JOHN LANE COMPANY

PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK

The
MAGPIE'S NEST

BY

ISABEL PATERSON

AUTHOR OF "the SHADOW RIDERS*'

'Le bonheur est un grand peut-^tre; et peut se
trouver dans un nid de pie"

{French Proverb)

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S. B. GUNDY : : : MCMXVII

Copyright, 1917,
By John Lane Company

THE- PLIMPTON -PKCtS
MOmWOOD>MASS-U-8*A

TO

H. M. K.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST

THE MAGPIE'S NEST

PART I
THE COCKLE-SHELL

CHAPTER I

IN a hollow sheltered under the brow of one of the
million hills which undulate away from the dark
flanks of the Northern Rockies, couched in the
yellow grass like a hare in its form, a girl child lay
with her chin propped on her hands, and stared at the
rippled surface of the slough below her. She had been
reading, but her books were closed. Now she was
thinking.

Her thoughts oppressed her, for she was a silent
child. She had no one to talk to about some things.
People laughed at her, or looked impatient, or puzzled.
This was because she knew a great many words whose
finer meanings she had not yet mastered, and she would
bring them out tentatively, solemnly, in disjointed sen-
tences that were either senseless for lack of a spoken
context or priggish and irritating. These efforts meet-
ing with no response, she would then retire into silence
again. The flower of childhood, the fruit of matur-
ity, are equally pleasant, but green apples set the teeth
on edge. Hope Fielding was at an age where she set
people's teeth on edge. She was over twelve, but
looked no more than ten.

10 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

She had two books with her. One was a waste of
words written by some earnest zealot who in his eluci-
dation of religion had stripped it to the repulsive skele-
ton of dogma. Her hard, exacting young mind, seek-
ing in it for something tangible, had quite naturally
captured all its absurdities, but she was not old enough
to have more than a very rudimentary sense of hu-
mour, so instead of being amused she was bored and
repelled.

She turned away from it, and slipped insensibly into
a daydream, that dangerous poppyfield of the imagi-
native and lonely soul. There is no visible horizon on
the prairies. Earth and sky melt together with a sug-
gestion of infinity. This is soothing to the adult mind,
which seeks in religion for the patience of eternity to
soothe the tedium of time. But children look for an
answer to very personal questions, and the infinite only
throws them back on themselves. If they are not then
satisfied with things as they are, their only recourse
is to remake them with a daydream. Childhood is
often a time of great perplexity and trouble, because
it can look neither forward nor back, and if the uni-
verse is not immediately right, it is not right at all.

This day Hope made her dream out of another book.
It was the story of Mary Stuart. Out of it, like a
magic casket, she brought strange treasure of rich
tapestries and bright brocaded velvets, lovely and too-
much-loved ladies and brave gentlemen with jewel-
hilted swords — all the worn trappings of romance,
which to her were still fresh and untarnished. She
thrust aside the barrier of facts and years and dis-
tance, and arrayed herself magnificently, in crimson
vair and rubies and high-heeled little shoes of gold,
to tread a measure at Holyrood. It was because she
really could think like that, in just such stilted phrases,
that her remarks were at times either Delphic or

THE MAGPIE'S NEST ii

absurd. There is nothing hackneyed to twelve years
old.

It was such a beautiful word — Holyrood. She did
not know exactly what vair might be, but that also
was a beautiful word. She crooned them over to her-
self, feeling as if she were slipping bright beads one
by one over a strand of silk. Meanwhile, she pulled
down her brown cotton frock to cover her brown knees.
They were otherwise bare, and scratched by the wild
rose thorns. Her fine, fawn-coloured hair was unbound,
and when it blew into her eyes she shook her head im-
patiently. Her eyes were cloudy blue, with quick dilat-
ing pupils ; she had a straight, unwinking gaze, which,
with the two fine lines already apparent between her
crescent eyebrows, gave her a proud and untamable
look quite at variance with the rest of her features,
which still had the unformed softness of babyhood.
She was thin and tanned, instead of plump and rosy;
she was altogether ungracious and shy, not only a green
apple but a wilding.

The sun told her she had been out for hours. And
she had gone far, and was weary. Her dreams scat-
tered, settling to earth like a flock of tired birds. She
rose and went slowly over the long tawny grass. It
was the colour of her hair, and the sky on this uncer-
tain day was the colour of her eyes. The grass rippled
in the steady, dry soft wind, in low running waves like
the surface of the water, an illimitable sea of grass,
unbroken by fences or dwellings. The wind was not
cold, but it went on and on monotonously. The spring
and autumn winds always made her feel listless and
out of tune with life. June was the month she loved,
when the moist earth seemed to send up its juices
to refresh her blood.

Then the sky stooped very near, a wonderful deep
azure, with clouds of the texture of white wool drift-

12 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

ing just above the hilltops. And then the herbage, the
very earth itself, diffused a thin, fine perfume, an ex-
quisite, clean, living scent. The wind had long since
beaten out that perfume and borne it away.

Hope was apparently all alone in the centre of a
vast unpeopled reach of yellow grass and pale blue
sky. Very far off and dim were the mountains. She
meant some day to go and see what was beyond them.

Yet, when she topped the rise which gave her a sight
of home, and beheld saddled horses which betokened
strange guests, standing patiently at the corral, she
hesitated a long ten minutes and then made a wide de-
tour, coming into the house by the kitchen door.

The kitchen was bare, clean scrubbed, full of a cheer-
ful warmth and intimacy which radiated from the bub-
bling teakettle on the stove as a centre. Hope came in
quietly, as she always did, and stopped stock-still, see-
ing herself not only forestalled but excessively super-
fluous. Her oldest sister, Nellie, was washing the
dishes, which Hope should have done hours before. A
young man was drying them. Nellie was a young
lady, which meant that to Hope she was infinitely
more removed than a stranger. The young man greeted
Hope. He came to the house very often, but she re-
sponded only with a shy jerk of her head, and went on
into the living-room, which she had not meant to do.

Only her mother's eyes greeted her there. Three
strangers were talking to her father. She sidled into
a corner, flanked by a tall cupboard press, and sat on a
small box which held all her own most personal be-
longings.

In another corner her three younger sisters sat cut-
ting pictures out of an old magazine. They whis-
pered together, and sometimes looked up shyly at the
guests. Her brother, the only boy in the family, iden-
tified himself with the men by sitting close to her

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 13

father and listening intently and unabashed, after the
manner of boys. He was fifteen, and did a man's
work. Hope was the odd one, uncompanioned.

"Yes," her father spoke to a grave, bearded man,
"I know the outcrop you mean. I get our own coal
there. I think you'll be disappointed. The vein's no
more than two feet thick, and shaley. What use would
it be, anyway, so far from a railroad?"

"We should go deeper," said the bearded man,
speaking with authority. "There was a test boring
made here years ago — I made it myself, in fact. But,
as you say, it was no use without a railway. Now
it's no secret that the steel will be here within three
years — the Whitewater branch. All you old-timers
will only have to sit tight, and the railway will make
you rich." He was an official high up in the councils
of the railroad; in a manner he was offering a re-
turn for hospitality.

"Rich ?" said Jared Fielding, dubiously. "You mean
it will bring in a lot of fool farmers, and our range
will be gone, and we'll have to go on again."

Fielding was a pathmaker, not a moneymaker, a man
whose life had been spent as a feather poised on the
edge of a flood, ever ready to advance yet further
ahead of the incoming tide of civilisation. In his
youth he had loved solitudes, and desired breathing
space. Now he felt the reluctance of middle age to
innovation and change. The bearded man smiled sym-
pathetically. He understood the spirit of such men.
With a stake and chain he had surveyed these very
acres years before; the test boring he had mentioned
was a veritable landmark in his own life.

Conroy Edgerton, the second guest, looked mildly
impatient. His smooth-shaven countenance was
shrewd, yet immature, a good type of the successful
American business man. There v/as intelligence rather

14 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

than intellect in his eyes ; he had the well-padded frame
of a man who understands the economics, if not the
aesthetics, of living well; a type evolved of the quick
prosperity of the Middle West. He had come on his
own business, land speculation.

The third stranger was the youngest, hardly more
than a boy. He showed to Hope a clean profile, faintly
Romanesque but stopping short of the too aquiline
nose. Hope liked him best because his skin was a
clear brown, darker than his yellow hair, not pink
like Edgerton's, nor weatherbeaten like the railway
man's. He had bright blue eyes, and a figure so well-
knit and compact that it saved him from looking in-
significant. Hope stealthily reached for a pencil and
tried to sketch him on the fly-leaf of her book, while
the conversation rumbled on pleasantly. He very
obligingly sat silent. He was thinking of his cousin,
whose marriage he must hurry on to Philadelphia
to attend within the month; he had come from the
other side of the world for that purpose. Having no
sisters, he thought of his cousin Grace rather in the
light of one — a pale, slim, clever girl. Her letter had
been insistent. But there was time to stop for a week's
hunting. The railway man was a very distant connec-
tion of his family.

For all the young man's stillness, Hope failed to fix
him on paper. She spoiled many blank scraps with
childish sketches, which showed manual facility, a very
small talent possibly, but nothing more. Her pencil
ran most easily to the making of fat brownies, squir-
rels, and funny baby faces with ducktail curls on top
of their heads, such as her plump, blonde little sister
had worn no long time before. It would not serve
for the severe lines of Norris Carter's chin and brow.
So she listened again perfunctorily, while Edgerton
made a forecast of the financial future of the country.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 15

It did not interest her. She knew her father would
never be rich; and she could not imagine that vast,
lonely country as ever suffering any change.

The young man saw her suddenly, peering bright-
eyed from her dim corner, and he smiled at her. She
flushed, with a quick movement drawing down her
short skirt, as if she would cover her bare feet. How
could any young man dream that if her fancy had
been armed with magic for fulfilment she would have
stood before him in a courtly gown with a three-yard
train and given him her hand to kiss! That tanned,
grubby little fist — she flushed deeper, looking down at
it despairingly. But when Edgerton also saw her, she
reverted suddenly to her true age. He was the kind
of man one expected to produce bonbons from mys-
terious pockets.

Following their eyes, her father's glance rested on
her at last.

"Did you come home for a visit, Hope?" he rallied
her. "Mother said you went out right after break-
fast."

"I w-went up to the beaverpond," she explained,
shrinking under the three pairs of eyes focussed on
her. "They — they've built a new dam. And I saw a
bear-t^ack. He'd been fishing. So I went around — I
went a long way."

"Beaver — and bears?" Carter roused to attention.

"Three or four beaver," Fielding explained. "It's
several miles from here, up the creek, where there's
brush. Last of the Mohicans, I guess."

"Aren't you afraid," asked the railway man, raising
his grizzled eyebrows, "to let that baby run about so
far from home? I didn't think there were any bear
left, either."

"Oh, maybe once or twice a year one wanders down
from the foothills," said Fielding indifferently. "Lit-

i6 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

tie fellows ; they run if they smell a man. We'd have
to tie these young scamps by the leg if we wanted to
keep them at home. Maybe it wasn't a bear-track, any-
way; probably she made it herself last week." His
auditors laughed. Hope felt the miserable sensation
attendant on speech out of season, commoner to ado-
lescents than to her own age. She shut her lips tightly,
and waited for a chance of escape.

But after the noon dinner, when the guests arose
to depart, Edgerton found her in the kitchen, and put
a heavy silver dollar in her hand, closing her palm on
it tightly.

"Buy yourself some gumdrops," he said confiden-
tially.

"T-thank you," she said, stuttering with shyness.
"But I can't; there is no store here."

"That's too bad," he said seriously. "Would you
get anything sent you by mail?"

And when she told him that she would, that mail
came once a week, he warned her to be on the watch.

"But I like ch-chocolates best," she put in eagerly.
And she held out the dollar to him.

He laughed, deep down in his chest.

"No, no ; that's yours now ; keep it."

Then they all saw, and laughed at her again, and she
fled. Edgerton only smiled kindly. He thought she
must be about the age of his own girl. Hope hid the
money in her box when they had gone. It seemed a
great sum, but she could not think of a suitable way to
spend it.

An atmosphere of solemnity enveloped the house.
In spite of her tendency to be oblivious of surround-
ings, Hope felt it. She followed her mother about for
a time, expectantly. In the evening, when the lamp
was lit, she forgot for a while, poring again over her
book, until she became aware of her parents talking

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 17

apart, seriously and in low tones. Sometimes they
addressed Nellie. Hope lost herself in naive contem-
plation, as a child does when shut out of a group. Her
brother, across the table, also fixed his gaze on the elder
three. The youngest girls had been sent to bed. Then
the mother observed their wonder and spoke, while
Nellie looked confused and rosy.

Nellie was going to be married !

The two children looked equally surprised and be-
wildered. Mrs. Fielding's eyes were misty. She was
nearing fifty, yet her life had gone by like a dream. To
find Nellie grown to marriageable age astonished her
also. She had transmuted hope into indomitable pa-
tience ; yet she wished she might accept every hardship
that could befall her children, and assure them of un-
alloyed happiness. No doubt Martha was a mother.

The parents took up again the discussion of the more
practical details of Nellie's future. Hope gradually
crept closer and held to her mother's sleeve. With a
start her father bethought him that it was past bed-
time, but that timid, insistent clutch moved her mother
first to take Hope onto her lap for a few minutes. The
child snuggled her tawny head on the deep, soft bosom
that had suckled her, with a feeling of some old grief
comforted.

"I wish my girls didn't have to marry," she heard
her mother murmur absently, thinking aloud. Mrs.
Fielding wanted to lift her own children, on her own
shoulders, if need be, above the level flood of the com-
monplace. But she did not even know that was her
meaning. Hope reflected with difficulty, because sleep
was overtaking her. Did girls have to marry? If
there was something else they could do, what was it?
If she went — over the mountains — she might find
out Her mother would approve.

"Oh, mamma," said Nellie gaily, not at all reproach-

i8 . THE MAGPIE'S NEST

fully, "do you want me to be an old maid ? Why, next
birthday I'll be twenty!"

She swooped down on her mother and hugged her,
dislodging Hope, setting them all laughing with the
infection of her own joyousness. But Hope, rubbing
her eyes and laughing also, put away her resolution
very much as she had the silver.

Two weeks later came a great beflowered box of
chocolates, tied with a yard of satin ribbon, from Ed-
gerton. Hope put the ribbon on her hair, shared the
chocolates impartially, and put her doll in the box.
She could not write and thank the donor, because he
had sent no address. But the gift meant a great deal
to her. It meant that life might be lavish, unexpected
and wonderful, like a fairy-tale. To the end of her
days gifts gave her that same unreasoning pleasure. It
was one of her most endearing traits.

CHAPTER II

NO one knew better than Hope that the rickety
dresser atop of which she perched had a castor
loose and must not be tempted by even one un-
wary wriggle. So she sat very still, almost holding her
breath, confining her skirts with a hand on either side.
The faded blue silk kerchief worn as a dusting cap,
the cross-over bib apron and slim ankles, revealed by
a treacherously short skirt, made her look not unlike a
rustic Dresden figurine set there for ornament. Even
her incongruously dainty buckled shoes helped the illu-
sion, though they did not assort with the cotton frock
she had not dared to change to run the gauntlet of the
housekeeper's eye. Besides, she had not a better frock,
but the shoes she could not have done without. She
had that flair for dressing; she knew the essential
points.

So she sat, waiting and watching Evan Hardy, who
smoked a cigarette and laughed at her. The fear of a
tumble did not deter her, but there was no assurance
that she would alight feet first, in the approved manner
of cats and young ladies. And that was quaintly char-
acteristic of Hope, since she was in Evan Hardy's
room, and he had himself placed her in her elevated
position.

"What are you thinking of?" he questioned her idly.

"You," she said gravely. "I wonder "

"What?"

"You won't tell me." She felt very sure of that.

"I will if you'll give me a kiss.'*

"I want to get down, please."
19

20 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Come down, then. And I'll tell you anything you
like," he promised, holding out his arms to her.

She slipped into them. He carried her to a chair.

"Now, what do you want to know?"

Curled up in his arms like a kitten, she rubbed her
cheek ingratiatingly against his silk neglige shirt. He
smelled pleasantly of Florida water and talcum pow-
der, which was agreeable to her. His face was the fine
oval sometimes seen in the healthy Englishman of good
lineage — he was half-Cornish, half-Irish. He had
crisp, clean-looking brown hair, blue eyes, the mouth
of a young lover. There was nothing evil in his face
anywhere, nor in his heart. Neither was there any-
thing great. Years afterward, when Time had swal-
lowed him, Hope was conscious of a certain affection-
ate gratitude toward him, half for what he was, half
for what he was not. But then she was seventeen,
and quite unaware of cause for gratitude.

"Are you comfortable?" he asked.

"Not very," she answered, squirming slightly.
"I've got a crick in my neck."

"Don't you like to sit on my knee?"

"No."

"Why? Don't you like me?"

"Oh, yes — sure I do. But I don't much like being
touched."

"Nor kissed?"

"No one ever kissed me but you."

"No schoolboy sweethearts?"

But he believed her when she said: "Never had
any."

"Don't you like that ?" He kissed her.

At his first kiss, no long time before, she had
thought the earth slipping from beneath her feet. In
some strange way it had reached her imaginative spirit
and left her blood unquickened ; there was all romance

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 21

and nothing of passion in it. Her temperament was
still too closely sheathed in its northern ice to wake
to one kiss. But when she thought of it still it
had power to arrest her mind and hold her, dreamy-
eyed, with caught breath, her white teeth denting her
lower lip, remembering it and the hours she had
spent afterward in her room alone, with her face
hidden in a pillow, still conscious of the soft pressure
of his mouth on hers. What was still more strange,
now his caresses left her cool and a trifle petulant;
she endured them only for liking's sake. Evan did
not want to trouble her, only to understand. So he
asked :

"Are you afraid of me?"

"No." There was very little that Hope was afraid
of.

"What, then?"

"I want to know," she burst out, with plaintive de-
spair, "why you like to kiss me!" And indeed, she
did. "It — it bores me, rather. You seem to like it.
Why?"

"Good Lord !" He stared, a picture of amazement.

"Bores you Why do you come here?" But that

he said very gently, for he had always known that
women were not mere automatons, responding only to
one emotion, and at the will of a man. It was fasci-
nating to see her struggle to express herself.

"I told you," she said impatiently, unembarrassed.
"I like you ; and you asked me. Where else can I see
you? I want someone to — to play with."

So he had guessed.

"You said you'd tell me," she reminded him, sigh-
ing against his shoulder.

"Well," he said at last, "you are — sweet, you know."

"But," she got to her point laboriously, "you like to
kiss girls?"

22 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

This was the difficult point ; she felt cheated. Prince
Charming woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, and
by that she knew him for the true Prince. It was the
countersign of love, no less. But Evan did not love
her! She did not especially want him to, but it was
disconcerting to find the sign false ! As for the roman-
tic alternative — that he must be a villain She

smiled, her delightful secretive smile, which so seldom
accorded with any outward occasion. And he did mis-
understand that for a moment. Very firmly and gently
he held her and kissed her again and again, soft kisses,
but with fire beneath them, until she could feel her
cold mouth grow warm to them, and the blood beating
in her throat. His heart fluttered, too, close against
hers.

"Does that bore you?" he asked in a queer, tense
voice.

She put her hands to his breast and thrust him
away, crimson, confused, shaken.

"Oh," she said, "I— don't like you to do that." There
were tears in her eyes.

"Why, you baby child," he set her down hastily and
crossed to the window, looking out into the windy, dusty
dark. "Don't cry, dear; I won't." He looked dispro-
portionately ashamed and sorry. "Have some choco-
lates.'* He turned to find them.

Laughter welled up in her at his propitiatory oflfer-
ing, and he spun about and looked at her again.

"You're a bit of a devil, too," he said, his teeth
flashing. "But I'll be good !"

"Do you like to kiss any girl ?" She held to it, with
the frightful persistency of youth.

"O Lord," he said again, almost prayerfully. "No,
not just any girl. What a reputation! Nice ones —
yes, I do like to kiss 'em."

"Can you remember them all ?" she pursued.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 23

"AH the girls I've kissed ? My word, what a funny
child you are ! No, I don't suppose I can. They were
nice girls, anyway."

''How many?" Hope yearned for something defi-
nite, in this welter of things as they ought to be and
things as they were.

"Tell you I don't know. Millions !" He was laugh-
ingly desperate.

"Well, but — why?" That was it, and she wanted to
pin him down to it.

"Because Oh, if you will be a little tease, I'll

kiss you again!"

No doubt, he reflected, someone would put the key
of the Bluebeard's chamber in her hands, and soon,
but it was not for him. There was nothing morbid
nor unhealthy about him, none of the blase spirit which
delights in wanton destruction. He was exceedingly
glad she had not understood a little earlier. He drew
a long breath of relief that the moment had gone past.
She was watching him wistfully.

"I knew you wouldn't tell me "

He caught her up suddenly, smothering her words
against his shoulder.

"Hush— sh!"

Someone rapped sharply on the door. He carried
her across the room, and when he drew the door half-
open she was behind it, breathless, rather elated and
amused, holding her skirts again, lest a ruffle should
peep out. Almost against her ear a masculine voice
spoke :

"Coming down for a game of pool before we turn
in. Hardy?"

"In five minutes or so," said Evan agreeably, but
casually barring the way. "Pick up Jim Sanderson;
I'll be there."

"Oh, Sanderson?"

24 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

There was an accent of doubt in the voice, and some-
thing more, a familiar ring — who? where? when?
Hope had heard it before, but none of these questions
eould she answer.

"Oh, I owe him a drink," said Evan, half apologetic.

"All right," said the invisible one, and Hope heard
quick, even footsteps retreating down the hall.

Evan shut the door and looked at her, his eyes twink-
ling despite himself.

"Close call, young lady," he said. "And, anyway,
time little girls were in bed. You know you mustn't
stay after ten."

"Who was that?" she demanded, ignoring his re-
minder of his own rule — a quite extraordinary rule,
but one which it had suited him to make.

"Conroy Edgerton, the big land man," said Evan.
"Curious one, why do you want to know ?"

"I knew it," she nodded solemnly, not heeding him.
"What's he doing here?"

"Rigging up some deal. He's starting a big company
North, you know ; got concessions from the Sleepy R.
I met him in Winnipeg last year. Anything else?"

"Good night," she said, and began edging past him.

"Having pumped me dry, the young lady has no
further use for me," he complained. "Come here, you
Mighty Atom !" He had her fast. "Now, you give me
one. You've never kissed me yet."

Millions of girls — millions of kisses! But she had
done with the subject for the moment, her mind being
on the weighty matter of a box of chocolates. So she
said "Yes," stood on tiptoe to frame his obediently bent
head with her palms, and kissed him on the mouth.

"You are a baby," he said. "With your mouth shut
— like that ! Never mind, you're a dear. Good night,
child."

She slid out, squeezing through the partly opened

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 25

door like a mouse through a crack, and vanished down
the hall, a moving blue shadow, past the housekeeper's
room, safe in her own tiny cubicle, after a momentary
pause at Agnes's door. The transom was dark ; Agnes
was either asleep or philandering. Hope did not care
for the other one. Belle, who was fat and loud-voiced.
She went to bed, suppressing her desire for a feminine
conference. And, since she must rise at six, she slept
the sleep of the unjust within five minutes after her
head touched the pillow.

CHAPTER III

BELLE, the fat waitress, lay abed with acute in-
digestion, groaning, and below Hope took her
place. She stood behind the screen which shel-
tered the kitchen door, yawning delicately, for it was
not yet seven o'clock, and watching for the early com-
ers to the dining-room. They, too, yawned and rubbed
their eyes, and looked disconsolate and lonely in the
big room, seated before desert-like expanses of more
or less white linen. Agnes swayed to and fro along
the cocoa-matting lane between the two rows of tables,
moving with the grace of a Greek girl bearing an am-
phora upon her shoulder instead of a lacquered tin
tray. Agnes was slender and black-eyed, with cheek
bones of a betraying prominence; she had a certain
graciousness of manner that disarmed even the hardi-
est commercial traveller; and the early ones sought
her tables. Hope drew her behind the screen a mo-
ment.

"If a big man, in a grey suit and a white waistcoat,
comes in, will you please let me take his order?" she
asked confidentially.

Agnes was in haste, and nodded a "yes/' not stop-
ping to reason why.

Immediately the big man came in, pink-faced and
fresh and yawnless, and sat at one of Hope's own
tables, in a retired comer near one of the long win-
dows. His waistcoast shamed the linen desert, and
the early sunlight glittered on a diamond in his tie.

"Beefsteak— pork chops — hamaneggs — teaorcoffee ?"
Hope murmured timidly over his shoulder.

96

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 27

There were other words on her tongue, but she
waited to see if any gleam of recognition lighted his
eye. It did not. She retreated, and returned with
such viands as he designated. The other early ones
were leaving ; there was always a lull between the very
early and the chronically late. Hope sat in the window
and watched him attack his beefsteak, drawing the
white muslin curtains about her, and looking out from
between them like a little nun from her white coif. He
was quite aware of it, and waited until the door had
closed on the last of the other breakfasters. Then,
seeing him about to speak, she forestalled him.

*Thank you for the chocolates," she murmured
gently.

"The what?" he remarked, slightly overcome, and
giving the beefsteak a moment's truce.

"The chocolates." Hope spoke very firmly, despite
her unconquerable blushes. She still blushed and stut-
tered when she most wished to preserve a calm and
matter-of-fact demeanour. "I got them. I wanted
to write, but there was no address. It's five years
ago, but I remember it distinctly."

"Five years ago?" He looked properly apologetic.

"You stopped at our house, on Whitewater Creek,
with two other men. I wasn't very big then."

"I should say," remarked Edgerton, resuscitating
the memory with difficulty, "that you aren't very big
now. You — why, yes, I do remember you. And what
are you doing here?"

"I brought your breakfast," she reminded him.

"You did." He looked at it in confirmation. "But
tell me all about it."

"I'm working here. Usually I'm upstairs. The
other waitress is sick this morning. I have to work,
you know."

28 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Do you?" He seemed genuinely interested. "Do
you like it here?"

"It isn't so bad. Of course I'm not going to stay
for ever."

"Where are you going from here?"

Hope was quite ready to chatter when she had so
good an audience.

"To Normal School. I had to earn the money to
go. I want to teach drawing. I finished High School
last year; I stayed with my sister Nell. But there
isn't any Normal School there, so I had to earn money
to pay my board."

"Where are your parents ?" He was thinking of his
own daughter. "Are they still at Whitewater?"

"Yes. But I wanted to do this. I have four sisters
and only one brother. That is too many girls."

"That's right. You're a plucky kid. Do you like
chocolates yet?"

"M-mm," she nodded.

"Where can I see you? I'd like to talk things over
a little."

She reflected. Where could she see anyone, ex-
cept here in the public dining-room? Evan was an
exception. He was "only Evan." So Agnes said,
and Agnes was always right. Agnes was twenty-two
and had much understanding of men. Hope meant to
extract that fund of information some time, but hith-
erto embarrassment had overcome her on approaching
the topic. She could only ask guidance on specific oc-
casions.

"Do you want to see me? Why?"

She became a living interrogation mark, her eyes
pointing it.

He laughed, the laugh she remembered.

"Heavens, child, I won't hurt you. Maybe I can
help you. You don't look suited to this." His glance

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 29

comprehended the dining-room, passed through its
walls, encompassed the hotel, included the town con-
temptuously.

"Well" — she considered — "there's a little balcony,
upstairs — the third floor, off the hall. No one goes
there. No one could see me, after dinner. If you
like "

"All right. At eight o'clock ?"

"Eight-thirty," she offered. "We have to wash the
silver and glass after dinner." She made a moue at
the task.

"Just as you say." He drew out a thin gold watch
and consulted it. "I guess my car will be waiting. I
must go. Good heavens, I forget your name!"

"Hope Fielding."

"Do you mind "

"I'll spell it," she laughed, and did so. She was
used to comments on her name.

"To-night, then. Miss Fielding," he said courteously.

She reflected that most of the men who came to the
hotel would have instantly and unceremoniously used
her first name. He went out, his face stiffening into
a mask at the last moment, as Agnes re-entered. The
significance of it was lost on her. With him it was not
quite instinctive, but second nature, for he had a genial
soul. He had gained large possessions, and, instead
of them bringing him ease withal, he must be perpetu-
ally on the defensive to keep them. It was indiscreet,
he knew, to have made the appointment at all, for he
feared women possibly more than men, but he had
made his money as much by his understanding of hu-
man nature as by his foresight in the matter of practi-
cal opportunities. In a country where any man might
become rich, and yet not all might, it had been neces-
sary for him to know whom he could trust. And he
knew there is a splendid recklessness about the young

30 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

which makes them worthy of confidence. They have
not learned to weigh advantages against good
faith. No, he was quite sure of Hope, even though
he did not quite know why he had asked to see her.

Nor did Agnes, when Hope told her, during the
afternoon, when they should have been resting, or
sewing buttons, or darning stockings, or anything ex-
cept retailing confidences — naively veiled and hesitant
confidences, punctuated by the occasional blushes of
Hope and gropings after the desired, not too revealing
word, by Agnes. Agnes was quite four years the
elder, but in ordinary conversation the diflference did
not make itself felt; the younger girl's quick-flashing
mind and habit of thought overleaped the gap. But
now she sat at Agnes's feet and imbibed wisdom.

"Maybe he's all right," said Agnes dubiously. With
her it was not the situation but the man who made it
"all right" or otherwise. Experience had taught her
how much "nice customs courtesy to great kings," and
her ruler was necessity. "H you used to know him,
of course. But where are you going to see him? Oh,
the little balcony, that's different! Tell me what he's
like. He never came here before, but he left a dollar
under his plate last night. He didn't ask you to go to
his room, did he?"

"No."

"Then he's all right. Look out for the others."

"That Sanderson did — the pig! He waited for me
in the hall; I know that was all he was waiting for."

"I hope you snubbed him properly." Hope nodded.
"He's a rotter," added Agnes, with conviction.

"I don't like him," Hope agreed. "But "

"Yes?"

"Why mustn't we — I " She floundered hope-
lessly, and Agnes did not help her. "I don't like him;
I never want to see him. But he — no one could hurt

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 31

me, could they? It's all the same to me; isn't it to
you? I mean, anywhere, any time. Why can't we
go where we please ? Why can't they leave us alone ?"

"Men are different," said Agnes shortly. "Don't
you know?"

"No."

"I guess they're crazy," Agnes pursued, with a judi-
cial air. "Didn't you ever see one go off his head?"
She spoke in the detached manner of an entomologist
discussing the habits of some rare and curious insect
at first, but Hope noticed a little shudder run over her
as she finished, and her lip curled back in distaste.

Agnes was a Catholic, and devout, if human. Per-
haps that explained, in part. The rest her surround-
ings accounted for; and her point of view was abso-
lutely correct, allowing for the angle.

"No," said Hope again, rather breathless and em-
barrassed. Once before Agnes had been as frank as
this. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, well — they're horrible. And then they say you
had no right to — to tempt them. You've got to be
careful; you've got to be sure before you believe a
man. Even then, of course, they're silly, but the de-
cent ones — they're decent, of course," she ended am-
biguously.

"I don't want to tempt anyone," said Hope, blush-
ing furiously. "I just want to talk to someone — some-
times."

"Men can't understand that," said Agnes calmly,
shrugging her shoulders. "They act like fools, and
then blame us."

"If I don't try to tempt anyone, it's not fair," said
Hope. "They can tempt me, till they're blue in the
face ; I don't mind. They ought to take their chances,
too."

"What chances?" asked Agnes, with latent humour.

32 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"That we won't like them," replied Hope decidedly.

There was something in that, Agnes thought, but
she had not time to examine the proposition critically,
having to dress for dinner. Afterward, Hope was
quite naturally absent.

From the little balcony one could see a great deal
without being seen. The town square lay before them,
an expanse of thin, discouraged grass bordered with
poplars, obscured now in dusk, with little black figures
moving here and there across it. Around it lights
appeared one by one in the windows of the houses.
Voices floated up from the street below. There were
several stiff uncomfortable chairs and a small table,
which they drew into a corner, so they might sit fac-
ing each other over it. Hope put her feet upon the
chair rungs and rested her chin on her hands. Her
whole mind was bent on the man opposite, as if she
would draw out his innermost secret thoughts. Young
femininity possesses a fund of inquisitorial cruelty
which positively yearns to dissect a man's very sOul
and would leave it bare and bleeding before high
Heaven and, for sheer ignorance, feel not even a
twinge of conscience afterwards.

The innocent hardihood of her eyes impressed him ;
she was at once so joyous, so lightsome, and so pa-
thetic. He wished she were not quite so young. It
smote him like a reproach. Abruptly he asked her
age.

"In a month," she said, "I'll be eighteen."

He was more than twenty years her senior. And
yet he felt a young man. But she was so very small.
What was he doing there, anyway ? He could not an-
swer when she countered with :

"What did you want to see me for?"

"I thought I might help you," he repeated thought-
fully.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 33

"How ?" For she felt tremendously capable herself,
and he perceived that, but she was so very small — and
the world looked suddenly terrifying to him. She was
adrift in a little cockleshell on the ocean, and himself
on the deck of a big liner, looking down. How could
he throw her a line? Her frail craft would be
swamped in the very wash of the big boat.

"I don't know," he said. "But I have an idea. Let
me think it over." He was beginning to have quite a
clear idea, but he never spoke in haste; that was his
strength. "Do you want to teach school?"

"Not exactly." Her eyes grew dreamy. "No, I
shall have to — but I want to go all around the world,
and look at everything, and do everything, and meet

everyone, and dance, and ride, and " She broke

off with a laugh. "Have you ever been around the
world?"

He had been abroad twice, and he told her rather
clumsily about France and Egypt — the last because she
questioned him eagerly. She was thinking of the
tombs of the Pharaohs, and palm-trees, and the Nile,
and Cleopatra's barge; and he was thinking of Shep-
heard's Hotel, of dust and fleas and tedious guides.

"No, I can't say I want to go again. You can't get
a decent beefsteak anywhere in the East."

"Oh, oh," she said, almost sorrowfully, "did you go
there to look for a beefsteak?"

And she laughed and laughed. He could see the
point well enough, and joined in; but he knew none
the less that beefsteaks were very important. The di-
vergence may not have been entirely spiritual. Hope
could indeed have devoured a strawberry ice with en-
joyment in the teeth of all the Pharaohs and their
tombs. He encouraged her to talk, and the fact that
she quoted from books he had never read impressed
him extraordinarily, though it was not really strange,

34 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

since he never read at all excepting the daily
papers. When she shivered he wrapped her quite ten-
derly in his light overcoat and held her hands to warm
them.

She did not mind ; there was an involuntary yearn-
ing toward her conveyed by his touch. She under-
stood, also, dimly, that only her nearness gave her
this power over him; through her he touched nature
and to her he bent as the bearer of Nature's inexo-
rable decree. So she could sway him, because there
were vast forces, rooted a million centuries deep, be-
hind her; she could have her moment's will of him,
hurt him if she chose, and he would be helpless, be-
cause of his strength and his sanity. He might set in
motion the machines of industry, which would crush
a thousand like her, and have no compassion. That
was the other side of him. But toward her as an indi-
vidual he could be only what he was now.

So soon had she taken possession of his imagina-
tion. That was her hold, and she had secured it in a
moment. He had felt it suddenly when she stood at
his elbow in the dining-room, at the most prosaic hour
of the day, before he even saw her definitely; her
small, light feet had crept up and caught him unaware,
and her demure voice in his ear had announced, not
that she was coming, but that she was there, close, in-
side his guard. Then she had sat down and watched
him, from the window, with such an air of security.

Decidedy she had taken him by surprise, perhaps on
account of the environment, wherein one did not look
for such delicate little sprites. If it had been heavy-
footed Belle, he would at that moment have been
playing billiards and smoking a cigarette very content-
edly downstairs.

Her assurance was absolute now. She might have

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 35

had some timidity before him earlier, when he was a
sort of personification of worldly wisdom and tem-
poral success, but a man cannot carry such attributes
with him to a stolen meeting with a snip of a girl;
they are as impossible in the circumstances as fire-
works. He had to stand before her as a middle-aged
and good-natured man in a white waistcoat, somewhat
vainly adorned with diamonds, which merely helped
to reduce him to her level, or a little below — childish
trinkets for such as are pleased with them, not tokens
of achievement of a sort. She could not fear him,
and he could not make her fear herself.

Therefore his offer of help did not present itself to
her seriously. The man of affairs was not present, to
her ; how, then, could he help her ? But the man him-
self— yes, she liked him. He was accepted, so far,
on his merits. It flattered him, in the depths of his
unconscious soul, beyond words. Thereafter he was
hers ; at least in as much as he was his own.

Despite the dark, he could see her eyes grow heavy
at last; their faces were close over the small round
table. She blinked, and her head drooped, but when
she would open her eyes again resolutely they glim-
mered fitfully, like a cat's. He felt almost afraid, they
were so eerie, until she laughed, and the gleam scat-
tered.

"I am sleepy," she murmured. "Six o'clock "

"To-morrow, again?" he asked. "I'll tell you then
what I've been thinking. I'll give you my address,
too, so you can always reach me."

"All right." She drew herself up, stretching. The
soft rustling of her clothing, as her young body taut-
ened and relaxed beneath it, sounded to him like the
strange, provocative whispers that run through spring
foliage at dusk. Feeling an utter fool, he still sur-
rendered himself to his folly, and while she was say-

36 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

ing, "Here, at the same time?" he bent over quickly
and awkwardly and kissed both her hands.

She giggled, put her handkerchief to her mouth, and
ran away. Edgerton went down and bought himself
a drink, though he was an extremely temperate man.
Then, instead of mooning about, as he might have
a score of years before, he sat down and very reso-
lutely absorbed himself in the details of a new com-
pany organisation.

CHAPTER IV

IN the heat of her vexation and wounded pride
Hope would not have imagined it possible that
she should go to sleep while waiting for Evan,
though he delayed till dawn. But she did. She
walked into his room very coolly, with the aid of a
pass-key, but prudence forbade her to turn on the
light. The Morris chair, luxurious with both pillows
from the bed, gently soothed her from waking specu-
lation as to the whereabouts of Edgerton into fantastic
dreams in which he did not figure at all. He had
broken his appointment. She had watched for him
three-quarters of an hour in vain. Under no cir-
cumstances would she ever speak to him again, of
course, but curiosity clamoured for the reason of his
nonappearance. Evan might know. It was very sim-
ple, therefore, to find and ask him.

Had he guessed her to be there, there is no doubt
Evan would have come immediately. She diverted
him enormously, beyond anything else the town had
to offer. It was like having a pet kitten. It hap-
pened he was not in love at the time. But in answer
to a query if she would come, she had given him a
cool "No," and a game of poker was the next best
thing. She drifted off into the charming sleep of her
age about the time Jim Sanderson, finding the cards
running against him with maddening persistency,
threw down his hand and yielded the moment to ill-
luck. Evan and the others chose to stay. Sanderson
asked Evan for a book someone had mentioned ; Evan

37

38 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

tossed him his key and bade him go get it for himself.
Then he called for two cards, and forgot about San-
derson, who bored him rather.

It was the pink ribbon on Hope's braid caught San-
derson's eye first. The sudden flood of yellow light
released by the electric button under his finger seemed
to leap at it. He stood still, smiling unpleasantly.
Hope lifted heavy lids to blink at the glare, murmur-
ing, before she looked :

" 'Lo, Evan. I wanted " Then she sat up,

rubbed her eyes, and gave him a stare of instinctive
antagonism. She was annoyed, not embarrassed.

"Good evening," he said, and turned the key in the
lock behind him.

She did not answer.

"Won't I do as well as Hardy ?" he asked.

"Not for me," replied Hope, with a mixture of im-
pudence and disdain. She meant exactly what she
said — no more. "I'm going, anyway."

"Stay and talk to me a few minutes."

"It's late. Please excuse me."

But she could not get to the door ; he stood covering
it. And as he advanced toward her he managed to
guard it still.

"Got you now," he smiled.

She regarded him doubtfully, taking his measure,
the repulsion she always felt for him growing upon
her. An involuntary step backward placed a chair
between them. If only Evan would come! But he
would not ; she had only herself to rely on. That was
enough, of course. But it was degrading to have to
parley with him at all ; her impulse was to turn directly
from him and quit his presence without again looking
at him. What he was saying was not quite clear to
her; she was going behind his words, reading his
intent, which was not at all clear, either, but yet dis-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 39

gusted her. Or it was his eyes which disgusted; or
his bald, shiny head. Though he was a young man.

No, it was his eyes. That was certain the moment
he touched her, put his hand on her shoulder. Im-
pulse moved her instantly; if Jim Sanderson had
been a psychologist it might have interested him to
know that the impact of her hand on his cheek was
purely the result of a reflex action. But all he knew
was that for the size of her, she was well muscled,
and that the blood which flew to his face seemed to
colour his vision. The sting of the blow put a sud-
den edge on what else he felt.

He lifted her off her feet, almost, in his grasp, and
said, not loudly, "You shouldn't have done that." And
his teeth showed.

It was the culmination of a pursuit lasting three
months ; a pursuit of which she had been for the most
part oblivious. It had not been very hard to avoid,
ignore him; the housekeeper, a dragon at times, was
sometimes seen more in the light whereby Persephone
might have viewed Cerberus on her "not at home"
days. But he had been conscious all this while. That
was the curse of so small a place; one was, in fact,
conscious of every other inhabitant in it. There were
not a thousand red herrings a day for every individ-
ual trail, as in a great city. He could not help seeing
her, always vanishing down a corridor, or looking
from a window, or walking on the opposite side of the
street. And here he had caught her up, had her fast.

He could make her listen to him. He could But

very naturally he was not reasoning.

And she was. His own words gave her the cue.
She should not have done that! No, her blow was
not heavy enough. One had to be either stronger, or
fleeter; quite so! She was still, with the quiescence

40 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

of determined enmity, until he, devouring her hot face
with his abominable eyes, felt too secure, and the flex-
ure of his arm told her this was her opportunity. So
she went out of his clutch with the instinctive down-
ward wriggling motion of an obstinate baby. The
table was between them before he knew what had
happened, and he held a little strip of her muslin
blouse in his fingers. Dishevelled, flushed, furious,
but inwardly glacial, she backed cautiously against
the dresser.

"Please go away," she said. Her hands were be-
hind her. There was something of Evan's in the
dresser drawer; she was fumbling for it blindly, not
daring to take her eyes from him.

And again, if he had been a psychologist, he would
have gone away. But he did not.

This time his hand did not reach her shoulder.

He made a great deal of noise falling; it sounded
to Hope as if the roof had come down. Her fingers,
gripping the barrel of Evan's neat .38 revolver, tingled
from the force with which she had struck. Calcula-
tion had prompted her to club her gun; she knew
guns, and was not inclined to use it more messily ; any-
way, she was not sure it was loaded. If he had
guessed her purpose, of course its accomplishment had
been impossible; he could have fended the attack
easily, but he did not guess. On the whole, he was
obtuse, as well as disgusting. She stood still a mo-
ment, a bit shaken, but seeing him no whit less dis-
gusting lying on the floor at her feet, with an unpleas-
ant red mark on his temple, than he had been stand-
ing before her. Perhaps he was dead 1

Well, if he were But first, she must get out

of there. She did, turning off the light as she stood
at the door.

If he were, he was properly served. In the very

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 41

bottom of her heart she felt that. Much the same
sensation as one had after stepping on a noxious in-
sect.

In her room she scrubbed her face furiously with
soap and water. It afforded a temporary relief. She
took off her torn blouse and threw it viciously in a
corner, holding it by the tips of her fingers, poking it
with her toe. An ineffaceable soilure seemed to be
visible on it. She could have lacerated, bitten herself.
A faint nausea crept over her. After a while she grew
calmer and sat on the edge of her narrow bed, think-
ing, trying not to think. A vague curiosity stirred her.
Was he dead? And then her mind began to work
freely again, and she remembered that he had been
breathing heavily all the while he lay there. Of course
he was not dead ! Certainly, she was ridiculous. How
had it happened she could have thought him dead,
while he was visibly breathing? Perhaps because he
should have been dead. Her mind annihilated him, re-
fused to admit him to the company of living things.
That was it. It was the protest of her own ex-
quisitely healthy and normal psychology against the
monstrousness of his kind.

As if summoned by her thoughts, his voice came to
her distantly. Her window was open; it looked out
on the courtyard at the back of the building. His
words were not clear, but the voice was unmistakable.
Someone was chaffing him. She had been sitting there
for over half an hour.

She shuddered again. Slipping on a wisp of a dress-
ing-jacket, she went in search of Agnes, who repre-
sented things sane and clean.

Agnes sat at her mirror, making herself dainty,
aiding Nature a trifle in the matter of carmine. Hope
only wanted to sit with her awhile. They exchanged
casual, friendly words. The atmosphere was soothing ;

4J THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Agnes was so calm, so delicate and unruffled. Agnes
knew all about these things, and refused to let them
come near her. She walked daintily, but surely, avoid-
ing them. She was not clever at all, but she was her-
self. She refused to take colour from her surround-
ings. That was what one must do. But — what else?
One could not always, always live in a dull routine of
work, never looking to the right nor to the left, going
to one tiny room at evening. Hope had never read
Dostoievski ; she did not know he had put her diffi-
culty into words: "Do you know that a man's mind
becomes paralyzed in small, poky rooms?" Never-
theless, she felt it.

Her mind rebelled constantly, vigorously. One had
to leave the small, poky room sometimes — even at the
risk of such an encounter as this. She remembered
her own dictum. They ought to take their chances.
She was not sorry. Not at all. She had done quite
right. Oh, they should indeed take their chances!
All the evasions she had been compelled to these
months past crowded on her suddenly, invaded her
memory. At the time they had not troubled her.
The memory of Jim Sanderson's eyes was what made
them intolerable. Why should she, Agnes, any girl,
be hunted like that ? They harmed no one ; they earned
their bread. Those lurking, whispering, ogling crea-
tures needed what he had got. And she would go
where she pleased, and always be careful to even the
chances. After having the half a principality to run
over at large when a child, she would not let maturity
bar her into one little room.

But then, she knew she did not want to go any-
where again, for a long, long time at least. Time to
forget. ►She could study, to fill it. In a month more
she was to leave, too.

"Oh," said Agnes suddenly, "I forgot " She

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 43

fumbled in her belt. "Your big man gave me this at
dinner. For you."

It was a note. He had had to catch the seven
o'clock train. He had not known where to find her.
In six weeks or so he was coming back. Would she
not write?

He signed his name, also. But that, of course, did
not impress her.

No, she would not write. She did not feel in-
clined to write. What was there to say? Really, she
had never been inclined to talk to him ; it had only in-
terested her to hear him talk. And now her disgust
was a wall between her and masculinity, making com-
munication difficult.

There were flowers from him next day. She meant
to write, to be polite. But she put it off. She never
wrote. The flowers were delightful; they perfumed
his memory, in a way, purified it with their innocent
incense. But even so, writing struck her as too diffi-
cult— more, too profitless. But, as they were roses, she
kept the petals and put them in a little muslin bag.
The sweetness remained in them.

And in a month she did go away. There was no
Normal School here; only one town in Alberta was
large enough for that.

It was sorrowful to leave Agnes. Everyone seemed
to regret her exit. The dry, thin spinster housekeeper,
even, gave her a linen handkerchief for a parting gift.
The rotund bartender brought glasses of claret lemon-
ade for all the girls upstairs — Agnes, Belle, Hope and
the housekeeper. She kissed Agnes affectionately at
the last, a smooth, powdery, perfumed kiss. She
never saw her again.

Evan had been reproachful. Why would she never
come to see him again? So she did come, and sat
and stared at him with meditative, solemn, round eyes.

44 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

And at the last she decided that he was really just
what he had always seemed, and absolved him from
a great many things of which he had never dreamed.
And he laughed at her again, and she put her arms
about his neck, standing on tiptoe, and kissed him
shyly for farewell.

"Heaven be good to you," he said. "Look here,
child, what did I ever do to you? Was it because I
wasn't here the last time ? You told me you wouldn't
come."

She started.

"How did you know I was here?"

His reminder brought it all back so vividly, with
the familiar room to aid memory. He saw her lip curl
back from her small teeth, and looked at her shrewdly.

"I found your pink ribbon. Look." He drew it out
of his pocket, all soiled and crumpled. "What fright-
ened you away ?"

"Nothing." But she changed colour too palpably.

"Jim Sanderson came up that evening," he said
slowly. "Were you here then?'*

"He didn't tell you?"

"No. And I couldn't very well ask him." She per-
ceived Evan in that. No, of course he would not ask.
"He — I say, how did he get that bump on his head?
He said he walked into something, in the dark."

"Oh, he walked into something," said Hope curtly,
"but not in the dark."

"Why, you little devil," remarked Evan, rather joy-
ously. "Jove, to think you gave him what he de-
served. What'd you use? It looked as if it might
have been a paving stone!"

She showed him, and he chuckled inordinately, with
an unregenerate plaint that he could not have done it
himself.

"Oh, he needed it," he said.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 45

"Do you think so?" asked Hope.

She felt better. Evan was unconsciously exonerat-
ing his sex as a whole. A moral fog lifted from her
mind. He reassured her, still chuckling.

So she went away, almost gay again, buoyant, as be-
came her best. Nevertheless, she decided to wait a
little, to satisfy herself in her narrow room, if possible,
until her judgment ripened. Mere fastidiousness for-
bade the thought of another such encounter.

The next night the train carried her northward.
She felt eager and wistful, and lonely, and intensely
alive and capable of being glad. She had an immense,
unfed appetite for life.

The train rushed on, and on, roaring through the
dark. It seemed to have an object of its own. Her
being aboard it appeared incidental and of no conse-
quence to it. It was something like life.

She wished Evan had been there. He would have
been warm, and human, and aware of her.

CHAPTER V

IT should have been spring, but the streets were
grey and dry, and the wind brought dust instead
of the scent of flowers. Dust — dust — it stung
her eyes and the taste of it was on her lips. She felt
it in her hair.

The town lay in a cup of the hills, where the rivei
wound a lazy half circle. At the edge, just beginning
to climb the slopes, hovered a fringe of skeleton dwell-
ings still building. Then, abruptly, without even a
sown field to frame it all, the prairie began. The
houses were shriekingly new, and naked to the sharp
sunlight, save on one or two short streets, where they
sheltered gratefully behind rows of soft maple and
Cottonwood and a lapful of vivid green lawn. This
was only in the very oldest part of town, where the
houses were little and low, softened to a charming
homeliness by the passage of twenty years or so since
they had constituted the whole town.

"If I only had a little sackcloth," mused Hope. "I
shall be twenty-one to-morrow!" She looked even
less than that, which seemed a ripe age to her. Since
seventeen she was very little changed, being still very
slight, the narrow shoulders, with an almost imper-
ceptible droop to them, giving her an unwarranted air
of fragility. All her figure was girlishly flat; her
bosom was barely curved, and her motions abrupt.
Standing on the schoolhouse steps, she looked up and
down the empty and profitless streets. The children
had dispersed. Her mind hopped about inconse-
quently.

46

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 47

"Are you going home?" Mary Dark, coming up
behind her, suddenly slipped an arm through hers.
Hope started, turned and smiled, but said nothing.
"I came to take you to Mrs. Patten's for tea," Mary
added. Mary was of a pale darkness, with a sorrow-
ful, impish face.

"I — I don't want to — just now," murmured Hope
doubtfully. "I want — to run away." Her eyes
searched the horizon of dun-coloured hills that met a
pale, clear sky.

"Where to?" asked Mary. "And with whom?"

"Everywhere — ^nobody," said Hope. "All alone. If
I don't, I shall explode. Do you know that somewhere
people are doing things — inventing, exploring, writing,
thinking. They've found the North Pole, and discov-
ered X-rays, and built aeroplanes. We sit here, like
chickens in a coop. Mentally, we're in the Dark Ages.
I want to go and crowd in, to be part of it all — under-
stand it. Things are happening, and I'm not there!"
Her voice was almost a wail. "I want to be in the
middle of the big commotion, to clutch the tail of the
comet. / want an X-ray for breakfast, I want to fly.
I want to go where real, new ideas are being thrown
around like brickbats. I don't care if one does hit
me behind the ear. When I left home it wasn't for
this." She waved her hand contemptuously. "Want
to watch the wheels go 'round. I thought I could
do it— get near to life. But if this is all, why didn't
I marry one of those tow-headed Swedes on the next
ranch? I tell you I want to see the world. And I
don't mean simply cafes and loud, over-dressed peo-
ple."

"This is the world," said Mary Dark wisely. "I've
seen it."

"Like the Sydenhams did?" asked Hope scornfully.
"You've heard, of course, you know them — I don't.

48 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

They came back from England last week, after spend-
ing a week there. Went over to 'do' the Continent
for six months. They never saw the Continent.
They've lived here all their lives, haven't they? And
they came back here; said there was nothing over
there, anyway!"

"Yes, I heard," said Mary, laughing. "But what
ails you? Quarrelled with Ned?"

"M-mm-mph," Hope answered, with an indescrib-
able sound and a shrug. "Nor with Tom nor Dick
nor Harry nor whatever their names are. I wish there
were even some real men here. Clerks, and retired
grocers, and remittance men and things."

"But you flirt with them," Mary reminded her.

"I suffer fools — sometimes," said Hope disingenu-
ously. "Oh, I'm suffocating. I really cannot bear
ever to see one of them again. I'm almost twenty-
one," she repeated hopelessly. "Is life really like
this? I thought it would be all one glorious adven-
ture, not an endurance contest in boredom — slow star-
vation."

"Come to tea, you idiot," answered Mary affection-
ately. "Fate put a little too much yeast in your lump
of dough, I fancy. It will fizz out by and by."

"You," said Hope, studying the other's half-veiled
eyes and close mouth, "have had your adventures. So
you sneer at me. Look, there's a naughty-mobile. I
want a ride. Oh!"

"I've had nothing," said Mary Dark. "And you're
flirting with that chauffeur! Hope, you wretch!"

"Not," denied Hope, smiling sidelong. "I met him
at the rink last night. I didn't know he was a chauf-
feur. I thought he was an oyster. He never speaks.
But his eyelashes are remarkable."

"You are an abandoned wretch," remarked Mary
severely. "I shall leave you here."

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 49

She turned the corner, but through her back hair
she could see that the car had drawn up to the curb.

"Want a ride?" asked the boy of the eyelashes la-
conically, in a rich, husky drawl.

"I do," said Hope, and scrambled up beside him.
"Whose car is this?"

"Mine — maybe," said the chauffeur, still drawling,
and with a jerk of his wrist he sent the glittering
monster hurtling down the road. It was true that he
had remarkable eyelashes, and his warm, olive cheeks
had a down on them like a ripe peach, and his eyes
were dark, and ingenuous, like a child's. His leather
cap and plain serge coat became him almost too much.
Like Hope, he was just past twenty — in years. "Where
to?" he inquired, leaning back.

"Anywhere," she said ecstatically, taking off her hat
and putting it under her feet. They slid out along
the river road, through the one bit of beauty nearby.
The dust streamed out behind them, but they breasted
clean air. Out of sight of habitations, the boy put
his arm about her.

"Don't be a pest," said Hope crossly.

He removed it.

"All right," he agreed. "Didn't know."

"I only met you once," she said. "I even forget
your name."

"Name's Allen Kirby," he drawled. "And I'll stick
around, if that will help."

His face was expressionless; Hope laughed despite
herself.

"Whose car is this?" she demanded again.

"I'll tell you — next time," he promised.

"But there might not be a next time."

"Won't you come ?" He turned toward her, watch-
ing the road out of the corner of his eye. "Perhaps

50 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

you fly too high for a chauffeur. You don't look like
a school teacher."

"How did you know ?"

"I spotted you a week ago. You look like a big-
town girl. I asked to meet you. Drove around six
times to-day before you came out. Don't know any
other girls here."

It was a long speech for him. It astonished Hope
immeasurably. She plied him with questions as they
fled through the waning afternoon. Sometimes he
answered; sometimes he turned the point, drawling,
immobile with the stillness of one who always watches.
She forgot she had been bored. Here was a most
authentic individual. Class distinction meant no more
to her than a pterodactyl. Besides in those earlier
days chauffeurs were outside of class. They were
adventurers, a new species.

They drove on and on, and back through the dusk
again, and she was sorry it must end. He put her
down, at her request, at Mrs. Patten's door, and said
negligently, "To-morrow," and purred off again.

Mrs. Patten lay on a wicker chaise-longue, in a
dark, straight gown and much comfort, nibbling Gra-
ham biscuits and talking gossip with Mary Dark, who
smoked interminable cigarettes and listened. She had
eyes like Mary's in that they were full of surface
merriment with deep wells of shadow below. But hers
were of a rare hazel-grey, and her features were mod-
elled with classic regularity. If she was not known
as an unusually lovely woman it was because she was
too indifferent; she wore her beauty casually, as if,
indeed, it truly belonged to her, rather than like a
seller parading her wares. She must have been over
thirty; but she had the same frank grace about that.
And, though it was not so apparent, Lisbeth Patten
had not only the courage of her convictions, but the

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 51

courage to run counter to them. There were things
very fine and very foolish about her: she was com-
pounded of tact and indiscretion; of convention and
generosity. And neither her friends nor her enemies
knew why they were so.

Now she fixed Hope with one eloquent glance,
and Hope wriggled uncomfortably. It was impossible
to defend without being attacked. Mary Dark smiled
with wicked humour. The three were friends, some-
what in the manner of castaways on a desert island.
At heart they loved each other.

"Have a good time ?" asked Mary, casting the gaunt-
let.

"I did," said Hope.

"Eleanor Travers was here this afternoon," said
Mrs. Patten, pouring, with a peculiarly refined and
graceful gesture, a cupful of tea quite black and cold
and giving it to Hope absently. "She was asking
about you, Hope. I think she means to call."

Hope understood, and did not understand. She
understood the significance of the implication, but it
would never be possible for her to see, with Mrs.
Patten's eyes, the importance of it. Miss Travers was
conspicuous in the town's inevitable "younger set."
She "assisted" at half the social functions, and was
an indispensable onlooker at the other half. Her
three new gowns a season were described thirty times
during that season in the weekly budget of society
items in the one afternoon paper. Hope had been
in the young city two years now, and said so, though
without any especial animus.

"I know, dear," said Mrs. Patten. "And people
are just beginning to know you."

Again Hope understood.

"I don't think so," she returned, dropping her lids.
"Fortunately! But what must I do to be saved?"

52 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

They all laughed.

"But, seriously, Hope," began Mrs. Patten.

"Don't reason with her," said Mary Dark. "Ask
her to do it for you. She has no intelligence!"

"No," agreed Hope happily. "But, is it necessary ?"

"Perhaps not," said Mary, mildly exasperated.
"But one might as well have what there is going. It
would amuse you — the dances and teas and rubbish —
above all, the scandal. What else is there in this
backwater ?"

"Well, I can make my own scandal," answered
Hope. "But I can't dance all by my lone, of course.
Ned Angell asked me to go to the next Tennis dance,
and a card for it fell on me yesterday out of a clear
sky. Is that a step forward ? I hope you're satisfied,
now I've progressed to — a bank clerk! Our creme de
la creme r

"Where did you meet Ned?" asked Mrs. Patten.

"I dunno," said Hope vaguely. "Wasn't it here?
You told me about him. No? Well, somewhere.
You know, one is always meeting men; stepping on
them every minute or two. I never can remember
where I meet any of 'em. He thinks I am an unap-
preciated genius. Because I made a picture of him
behind the grille at the bank, and me feeding him with
peanuts. Please don't take me literally ; it never really
happened. What shall I get for a new gown?"

TJiey discussed the topic with animation for a time,
and branched from that to a consideration of a play
by Wedekind which Mary had just read, and the
latest song by Strauss which Mrs. Patten played for
them. And then when Hope thought she was safe
they returned to her projected social career once more
and talked around and under and across that, and she
went away feeling vaguely apprehensive and bedevilled

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 53

and docile. She would do anything for Mary Dark
and Mrs. Patten — if she knew how to do it, and what
for ! In this instance she knew neither.

She was quite willing to go to the dance with Ned
Angell, but she could not see why that should preclude
her riding with Allen Kirby and becoming intoxicated
with the innocent joy of being alive at the rate of fifty
miles an hour. These things did not strike her as be-
ing in the least incompatible; and, of the two youths,
her dispassionate estimate placed Allen Kirby a notch
higher. Chiefly because he had a fine young pair of
shoulders beneath that serge coat, and he could drive
like a demon. Ned Angell, she knew very well, drank
— which she thought simply idiotic — and he had no
chest; but he wore his clothes with an air, strummed
the guitar and sang love songs to all the "buds," and
was on the organising committees of the Assemblies
and Tennis dances.

These things struck her as extremely inadequate,
regarded as virile occupations. They were in keeping
with the general unsatisfactoriness of things. Three
years before she had felt that now Hfe must widen
out before her, displaying new and unsuspected vistas
of joyful and intelligent activity, and an ultimate pur-
pose not theretofore clear. No such matter had hap-
pened. She had dropped into her new environment
without a ripple, and lay there like a pebble at the
bottom of a brook, with the clear, invisible current of
life still flowing by in merely mechanical contact. She
had wanted to be a little boat riding the stream, making
headway toward the sea. And all around her the
other little pebbles lay, apparently content with their
lot, wedged in their muddy bed. No, they were not
like pebbles; they resembled busy little waterbugs,
flying madly about their own tiny pool, keeping away
from the rapids below and the fresh springs above.

54 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Now, it seemed, she might also be a waterbug, if she
would. A magnificent goal, if she could shrink the
boundaries of her land of dreams to this! There
was, she gathered, one prime requisite. One must
above all things take the waterbug life seriously. One
must be a good waterbug! Ned Angell, now, was a
perfectly good waterbug.

The enormous absurdity of it smote on her sense
of humour, but still left her bewildered. She had
been wont to assume life in its social aspects to be
essentially simple. One met people; one liked or did
not like them. So it was settled, and one chose one's
friends. Of the arbitrary and rigid nature of formal
social connections she had no conception. The claims
of family, of money, of prestige, meant nothing to
her. She had no feeling for the clan; not even a
realisation of it. All her distinctions were personal;
she had morally the eye of the artist, to whom clothes
and appanages are drapery and ornament, not in-
signia.

For instance, the Round Up Club. It was the club.
As yet there was no country club; this was a purely
masculine affair. A group of the men who had made
money had organised, bought a little house, and were
wont to sprawl on the veranda of it, smoking ostenta-
tious cigars and imbued with a terrific air of superior-
ity. One could not doubt that they felt superior. Be-
cause they sat on that particular veranda. The ve-
randa, also, was sacrosanct because they sat on it.
This led nowhere ; it was funny, but perplexing. Also,
the Round Up Club! The name alone. — They were
mostly fat and tubby gentlemen, who would have been
more than ill at ease on the hurricane deck of a
bronco.

One she had seen the day before on the sacred
veranda, though, was rather good to look at. Dark

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 55

eyes, with a smile in them, and a lean, graceful figure.
She did not know who he was.

She wished she could feel serious about Eleanor
Travers's projected call. Lately she had been read-
ing Vanity Fair. Would Becky Sharp have spent so
much diplomacy and duplicity to attain, say, to Mrs.
Lockwood's teas ? Mrs. Lockwood, plump and placid,
whose husband had made the most money, and who
therefore "led society"?

Of course there was no real difference in being a
Knight of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, and a
master-butcher, so long as one was "first in the village
in Gaul," but, since her part was to be all concerned
with outward show and made no pretence of exam-
ining inward worth, Hope felt she ought at least
to have the show. The game might not be worth the
candle, but by every right there should be a candle,
if there was to be a game. So far there was a differ-
ence between a Duchess and a butcher's wife, and
Hope could understand Becky Sharp.

Becky's candle glittered very brightly, anyway.

But perhaps Eleanor Travers and the remoter Mrs.
Lockwood might have something to offer of them-
selves. One ought to try it out. There wasn't any-
thing else, as Mary Dark had said.

But there was ; there was one's personal liberty. Yes,
the mere right to talk to a chauffeur instead of a
narrow-chested bank clerk, if one chose. Without
some quid pro quo, Hope knew very well she would
calmly keep her liberty. She hoped she might keep
Mrs. Patten and Mary Dark also. Mrs. Patten taught
French, German and music in the schools, where Hope
instructed in English and drawing. Mary did multi-
tudinous things in a newspaper office, and was taking
a new and better paid place shortly as advertising
manager for a big new firm of land promoters.

56 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Neither had any more than she earned. For that rea-
son, she would probably be able to keep them. It was
their mutual poverty that constituted the desert island
whereon their friendship flourished. If a ship with
golden sails came for one of them, she must disappear
over the cloudy horizon. These matters Hope medi-
tated, and had the more leisure for that exercise
since Allen Kirby failed to reappear. There had
been no definite appointment; Hope assumed he had
failed of finding her. She spent her evenings at
home, reading omnivorously as was her wont, or at
Mrs. Patten's, where she sat meekly under the veiled
admonitions of her social mentor, and was therefore
accounted a good girl. Eleanor Travers had a cold,
and the call was postponed. The Tennis dance was
a month oflF. Existence continued as a succession of
impatient yawns.

Deep down she was in a turmoil of wild yearnings
for things impossible and nebulous, for the edge of
the skyline, and space, and action. Sometimes her
heart grew big in her with longing, even to the verge
of pain. She fed it with French irregular verbs, to
please Mrs. Patten; and to please herself was no
longer visible to her weedy collection of half-baked
admirers. It came to her like a revelation that they
had always bored her. She felt growing pains.

Then, on an evening of drifty, drizzling dusk, she
galloped down the river road and came upon Allen
Kirby, or, more properly, Allen Kirby's feet project-
ing from beneath the huge black and brassy-bright
automobile, while a large man in a sheep-lined duck
coat held a headlight for his convenience. The man
in the duck coat looked up at the sound of hoofbeats ;
her half-broken horse shied and danced at the alarm-
ing spectacle.

It was no kind of weather to be riding, which was

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 57

one reason why Hope had gone. It suited her to ride
in the dark, in the rain, in any kind of weather or
at any time of day — if it suited her. She wore a
divided skirt and a hideous red peaked cap, and her
mount stood sixteen hands and weighed fourteen
hundred and fifty. When he promptly stood on his
hind legs she leaned forward until she could have
kissed him between the ears, but she did not. She
merely jerked on the Spanish bit, downward, until
he grunted, looked around under his neck, and asked
impertinently :

"Want a tow?"

"No, thanks, not yet," said the big man, his teeth
flashing in his plump pink face.

And Hope said:

"Good heavens !" for no apparent reason, and stared
blankly as he lifted his cap. And then, "How do you
do, Mr. Edgerton?"

He stepped forward, with a mechanical "Good eve-
ning," and turned the light on her face. It was hardly
necessary, being not yet the hour when all cats are
grey, but it helped, for when she blinked, by a sudden
shift of memory he saw her again, nodding sleepily
over a small table on a veranda that looked out to a
dusty square set round with sudden pin points of
lighted windows.

"You!" he remarked redundantly. "Well, I'll be
damned! Tell me about it. Why didn't you answer
my letter?"

CHAPTER VI

BUT where is Mr. Edgerton?" asked Hope, step-
ping lightly to the seat beside Allen Kirby.
''We'll pick him up at the Club corner," said
Allen, and without a change of expression added,
"You'd better get in the tonneau; I'm only chuffing
this trip."

"Oh, splash!" said Hope, and scrambled over the
back of the seat. "But I want to ask you things."

She stood up and leaned over his shoulder and pro-
ceeded to do so. It had not been possible to hold an
extended conversation with Edgerton on that rain-
driven road, and as for Allen, he had merely given
her one impenetrable glance out of the corners of
his Murillo-cherub eyes which had constrained her
insensibly to a brief nod of recognition. Edgerton
might or might not have noticed it; Hope would have
greeted the chauffeur heartily but for his own curious
reserve. But Edgerton had insisted he must see her
again, hear something of how the world went with
her. When she told him very cheerfully that she had
nowhere to receive anyone — the tedious sprigs who
squired her were obliged to find an excuse of skating
rink or ice cream orgy for the pleasure of her com-
pany— he had suggested the motor and the first fine
evening. And Allen had grinned on one side of his
face only, the side presented to Hope, when Edgerton
told him to remember her address.

It was fine now, after the cold spring rain; the
earth gave out vernal odours, grown green over night ;
the West wind was gentle and bland. Coral banded

58

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 59

the sunset edge of the world and a low star shone like
a jewel, although the crystalline air still seemed to
hold the light of day in magical solution.

Hope asked fifteen or twenty questions while they
drove eight blocks, and received, for lack of time, less
than half as many replies. Edgerton had lately ac-
quired large interests, in land and mining properties,
in Alberta; he meant to spend some considerable in-
tervals of time there in the near future. He had or-
ganised the Golden West Development Company;
Hope cried out at that, for it was with them Mary
was engaged. Allen had been Edgerton's second
chauffeur in Chicago, and Edgerton had sent him up,
two weeks before, with the car. He did not know
how long he might stay. Edgerton had four cars,
and would not be without one.

"His wife uses the other three," said Allen drily.

"What's she like?" questioned Hope with the live-
liest and most impersonal curiosity.

"A hell-cat," Allen informed her briefly.

Hope merely said "Oh," and did not like to press
the query. It seemed unfriendly to pry thus into
the intimate unhappiness of one who had tried to
be kind to her. Hope had strange reserves and deli-
cacies, inherited from a prouder generation than this,
an age when private laundries were used for family
linen and broken hearts were not served up bleeding
at a penny apiece on the front pages of the dailies.

"But he has a daughter,'* mused Hope. "Isn't she
pretty?"

"I guess so," said Allen ; "any millionaire's daughter
is." He was not without worldly wisdom. But he
added in honesty, "She's not so bad; a good deal like
the old man. Not much side ; she talks to me friendly
enough."

6o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Are you going to elope with her ? It's being done,"
Hope teased him.

He answered, half seriously:

"I wouldn't marry any rich girl; they can't help
it, but they're too used to thinking the world was made
especially for 'em to walk on." His slow, soft, drawl-
ing voice, without an inflection, lent a certain humour
to most of his utterances ; Hope found herself laugh-
ing at him constantly, and he told her once: "I like
you because you seem so happy. You're always laugh-
ing." But now he went on, "Young fellows brought
up to spend money are the same. They don't see
things like we do; they don't know what's real."

*T suppose not," said Hope thoughtfully.

She reflected that there was a certain pleasure in
that knowledge of reality, however hard one found it.
The soil was good underfoot, even though the motor
was soft and swift. A little of both would be agree-
able— if one could have both. Even while she thought,
she had Allen explaining that he had not come to
take her for the promised ride because Edgerton had
arrived a day or two earlier than the programme
called for.

"You won't want to go with me now," he drawled.

"Oh, won't I?" remarked Hope. "Don't be an
id jit. I will if you'll ask me — unless you'd be fired
for taking me."

"He'll never know," said Allen.

Leaning against his shoulder, she felt him shake
with suppressed mirth. She could see no real occa-
sion for it. Why should she not go, if she chose? The
ethics of "railroading" the car she left Allen to settle
with his own conscience ; as for her going or not going,
she had tentatively decided that she was under no
obligation to refrain. Why not?

"You're a funny girl," drawled Allen.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 6i

He stopped for Edgerton, who stood on the pave-
ment lighting a cigarette from a gold-mounted case.
Everything about his appearance was in keeping with
that costly trinket; his linen, his shoes, his spotless
light grey suit and fawn overcoat, his too youthful hat,
shouted of money, almost drowning out the feebler
piping of good taste. His diamonds were more nu-
merous than ever; his rather ruddy face shaved to a
nicety. And he looked positively super-clean. As he
climbed in beside her, smiling and shaking her small
hand vigorously in his own grey suede gloved one,
Hope smelt fine soap and toilet waters and heard the
silk lining of his overcoat rustle. It gave her a wish
to pat him on the back, smooth his white pique waist-
coat approvingly, and tell him that he looked very nice
indeed. The thought crinkled the comers of her
mouth and brought out a dimple, and they beamed at
each other, each quite unaware of the other's motive
for mirth. As the car started a tallish young man,
just turning the corner to go to the club, started slightly
and raised his hat, but neither saw him. He was quite
a personable young man, and appeared to be interested
in what he saw. The big car purred away.

"Take the best road and go ahead. I suppose you've
learned your way about," said Edgerton, addressing
Allen's inexpressive back, with a note of good-natured
banter. Allen nodded without turning. "They all
railroad the cars out," he added resignedly to Hope,
who bit her tongue on a too hasty word of confirma-
tion. She had a positively fatal gift of candour, which
served her ill, for when she had told the worst and
the most, less ingenuous minds invariably drew the
conclusion that it was merely a prelude and conceal-
ment for further misdoings. "And now," said Edger-
ton, "I want to know."

62 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"But this is all there is to know," said Hope, and
threw out her hands. "May we go fast?"

"That's you!" He spoke to the chauffeur.

The purring deepened ; the river sped by like a rib-
bon of quicksilver. A light came into Hope's eyes,
but her body relaxed in a sort of ecstasy.

And Edgerton's heart melted in him again, and he
knew himself once more a fool. That gay, unconscious
courage of hers. It was plain she thought of life
as a glorified "joy-ride," and he knew it for a tread-
mill, where the gayest might weary quickest, stumble,
lose heart and go down. No, she would not go down,
but she would lose heart none the less, and that spark
in her eyes would die out.

"What do you want to do with yourself ?" he asked
abruptly.

"Everything," she answered, smiling radiantly out
of the fulness of the moment.

"If I make it possible," he forestalled her imme-
diate objection, "would you like to go abroad and study
art, or go to college?"

"Why should you?"

Somehow he had not anticipated that.

"Because I'd like to," he answered very simply,
drawing the rug up over her knees.

"Oh." She pondered, turned to him, and her eyes
accepted his word. "But I must think." She thought,
visibly, puckering her fair wide brows. "Not abroad ;
not art," she said at last. "I'd be a fraud. I have
no genius. Only a trifling talent, a trick. I teach — the
A B C's. Anyone could, if she couldn't draw a
crooked line. Read it out of a book. It would be a
waste of money, of time, of effort. But you're aw-
fully good. I wish I was a genius ; it would be so nice
to say yes, and be a wonderful credit to you. Oh, I've
often thought of it. But it isn't there. Genius must

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 63

simplify things for the possessor of it." He could
not catch all she was saying, now that she mused to
herself. "They know what they've to live for, and
they can take hold. Now me, I've only life to live for,
just like everyone else. And it's wonderful, but I
can't seem to take hold of it. It gets away from me.
Lots of people — most people — never do capture it.
Their whole lives escape them. I wonder, does it al-
ways escape them? Or is there somewhere, after all
this weedy barrenness is ended, where they — oh, ex-
cuse me; I'm such a scatter-brained animal."

He looked puzzled.

"But college ?" he asked finally.

"Were you thinkng of that, three years ago?"

"Yes," he nodded. "You might have been started
by now. I've thought of you often since then. When
I went back there, I asked for you. But you seemed
to have disappeared. Still, I thought I'd find you
again, before now. It's pretty hard to miss anyone
out here." That was quite true. There were but
three towns — not cities — of any size in all Alberta
then, and to walk down Main Street in any of the
three was to be seen of all men. Two people, town
dwellers, both living in the Province, could not fail of
crossing each other ultimately.

"Oh," she said, surprised, "I had no friends there.
How nice of you to remember. To think of you car-
ing!" It gave her a warm, quick emotion.

"Yes," he returned, "I do care." She was oblivious,
hugging her knees; he flushed darkly, unobserved.
"Will you go?"

"Mary's been to college," she said, with seeming
irrelevance. And Mary, like herself, was stranded
here, high out of the tide rise of the world's real
activities. Naturally, the connecting chain of ideas
was lost to him. He only stared at her anxiously.

64 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Let me think awhile," she begged him once again.

"I'll be here six weeks," he said. "Take your time.
Tell me when you've decided."

They turned homeward presently. She talked less,
feeling slightly overwhelmed by his generosity, and
shy. He, too, was guarding himself. A betrayal of
his curiously mixed feelings would have seemed grossly
unfair to her.

No, with all his clear and naturally kindly mind he
desired to set her rather in a straight path, though it
led her, gay and elusive, always away from him. In
that wish half his heart concurred. The other half
struggled to voice wilder impulses, to catch at the
skirts of her youth and hold her. She represented
lost and impossible things to him, things too sweet
and strange to be ever quite forgotten, desires fed on
husks and still hungering.

At her own gate he dismounted with her and fol-
lowed her into the screened porch. Then the spark
of rebellion in his heart flamed up. But he was as
awkward as a boy.

"Oh," she said, crossly, "don't be "

"Ridiculous," was the word that died on her tongue.
The sight of his abashment made her feel too keen
an edge on it for utterance.

"All right," he muttered. It reminded her of Allen
Kirby, waiting no more than twenty feet away in the
car, and she choked on a giggle. "I'm sorry." He
took her hand, and the pressure of his pained her.
"Good night. Do you think you might come again?"

"Why not?" she said carelessly. "Good night."
And as he turned away, she put her hand on his sleeve.
She was sorry she had laughed at him — twice, now.
"Thank you," she said gravely, and held up her
cheek.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 65

He touched it with his lips, hastily, clumsily, feeling
his very ears burn. The door closed on her deci-
sively.

Allen nodded assent, his smooth face positively
sleepy with immobility, at the brusque direction. The
car moved away. Edgerton sat and studied his chauf-
feur's back gloomily — and envied him.

CHAPTER VII

HOPE was dressing for the Tennis dance, fresh-
faced and sleepy-eyed. She had been out
half the night before, and had taken cat-naps
through dinner time to atone for it. Now she brushed
her hair, drinking a glass of milk and reading, all at
the same time. Her ears did not bum, though they
should have. They were only delicately pink.

Mary Dark and Mrs. Patten were discussing her.
Rather, Mrs. Patten talked and Mary listened, her
sorrowful grey eyes veiled, her mouth curled at the
corner.

"You ought to have some influence with her,"
mourned Mrs. Patten. "She's getting herself talked
about."

"Yes, we're proving that," remarked Mary, in a
detached manner. "What do you want me to do?"

"Give her a hint," said Mrs. Patten, distinctly irri-
tated. "Eleanor Travers asked me about it only to-
day. She was seen in Mr. Edgerton's automobile last
week."

"She shouldn't have been seen," agreed Mary
gravely. "I'll tell her so."

Mrs. Patten opened her mouth to speak, then
stopped, and a tide of painful colour flowed into her
face. Mary saw it, through her eyelashes, and dropped
them lower.

"I will, really, try to," said Mary, her tones subtly
altered. "Of course she's a little fool. That's why
we like her."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Mrs. Patten thoughtfully,
66

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 67

for she was not a fool, though she might act like one
on occasion. "You mean she's herself ; she's different.
But one has to pretend." She flushed again. "Of
course I told Eleanor it was all a mistake."

"She's known Edgerton since she was a baby, al-
most," said Mary, twisting the truth to the comforting
effect of a lie.

"Yes, we understand," said Mrs. Patten.

"Perfectly," said Mary, who did.

"It would be such a pity," said Mrs. Patten. "Peo-
ple would like her, if she'd give them a chance. But
she can't afford to do that sort of thing."

"That's it," agreed Mary again, with unperceived
irony.

"Mr. Edgerton is so conspicuous. What is he like?
Mrs. Shane told me "

"He snubbed Cora Shane. She tried to add him
to her collection. I can fancy what she told you. He's
not bad. An overgrown boy. Shrewd. Kind. Selfish.
Simple. Very simple. He doesn't like women who
swear, and tell smoking-room stories. So Cora "

"Of course," said Mrs. Patten, with an inflection
of malice. "Is it true that he doesn't live with his
wife?"

"Not quite yet," said Mary, allowing that to be in-
terpreted as it might chance. The possible, though
remote, significance of the remark in that context did
not escape her. She laughed quietly. "Oh, yes, it
might happen. In that case Hope could afford to."

Mrs. Patten was silent, thoughtful.

"But," added Mary meanly, "it's really the chauf-
feur Hope is flirting with," again making a half-truth
serve.

It served. Mrs. Patten almost turned pale.

"Oh, that's impossible," she gasped.

68 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Or the car," said Mary dreamily. "Getting down
to essentials. Hope is rather direct, you know."

"It was Ned mentioned it to me," said Mrs. Patten,
truly distressed. "He wouldn't believe it, of course."

"She must have snubbed Ned," said Mary pro-
foundly, forgetting her audience.

Mrs. Patten winced. They sat awhile in silence.
Mary was thinking of the curious friendship between
Hope and Edgerton.

It had all been under her eyes ; she watched it with
a certain pity, but no desire to interfere. She knew
the uselessness of attempting to deflect from any
course such a secretive, yet straightforward nature
as had Hope. She would go through or under or over
an obstacle, softly and silently and as if unaware of
opposition. There was nothing meanly obstinate
about her, but in certain ways there was no approach
to her either. She would do no harm, probably; but
certainly, having been born, not under a star that
danced but under a little faint wandering comet, she
would never fall in tune with the world to the extent
of establishing a fixed orbit. One must take or leave
her. Which of these the world would do depended,
Mary justly reflected, largely on her luck.

Mary had come to know Edgerton well. To him
she was only a quizzical smile, a clever brain, deft
hands. He trusted her. Sometimes he sent word to
Hope through her. Little notes, punctiliously un-
sealed. She had been unwilling at first; but he could
easily reach Hope, and it was better this way than
through another, less her friend. Mary, sitting at
her desk in his own office, fancied she could tell when
he was thinking of Hope, and at such times, when he
caught her eyes on him, he would redden slightly and
pore over his letters and estimates again. Squared
up to his big mahogany desk, which failed to dwarf

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 69

his solid proportions, absorbed in files and legal papers,
he would look the very embodiment of common sense
and well-rewarded shrewdness. And presently he
would give her a small white envelope, addressed to
Hope, and, putting on his hat, go out suddenly, with-
out looking at her.

Later, Hope would take the note, read it with quick
carelessness, nod, and speak of other things. Or she
might telephone to Allen Kirby, and tell him she could
not see him that evening. Then Mary would laugh,
and Hope would join her very gaily. Sometimes she
merely tore up the missive and said, "Oh, bother!"

The day before, she had said, as if to herself, "All
right," and sat awhile thinking. Mary went away.
She was not a mind-reader, or she might have re-
mained to remonstrate. Later, she imagined Hope
tearing through the night in the black and brassy
eighty-horse power monster with Allen Kirby gravely
at the wheel and Edgerton tangling himself up in mean-
ingless words, trying to explain to Hope things about
them both which neither understood. In reality that
young lady was curled up cross-legged on the deep-red
carpeted floor of Edgerton's rooms, beside an open
suit-case, neatly folding an assortment of cheerful
neckties and carrying on a desultory conversation with
the owner of them.

"Did anyone see you coming?" had been his first
apprehensive question as he closed the door sharply
behind her.

"No, I guess not," she replied carelessly. "Do you
mind?"

"I ?" he said, and stared at her. But he was aware
of the extraordinary recklessness of women. "I don't
think I should have let you come here."

"But it's cold out," she argued. "And I can't have

TO THE MAGPIE'S NEST

anyone where I live. Besides, I wanted to see. Your
room looks like you."

It did, being large and substantially comfortable, but
without originality. There were no books; she com-
mented on that, roaming about and tossing aside a
newspaper or so disdainfully. She tried the big leather
chairs, and presently insisted on helping him pack. He
was going on the midnight train, to be absent a month
or more.

It was characteristic of him to have these expensive
rooms. He had furnished them himself; the small,
rather shabby hotel annoyed him, and the cost was
a matter of indifference to him. But he did think he
ought not to have let her come here. He had asked
her to appoint a place. Allen told him the car was
out of order. She had suggested his office ; mere hos-
pitality had prompted this alternative. He felt rather
strange when she assented immediately; he didn't
know what he felt until she entered, and then he had
expressed everything in that first question. He
thought of his own daughter. And he made a vow
that if ever she needed him he would stand back of
her. What else could you do for a girl ?

It gave him a wistful delight to see Hope stroll
about, half tiptoe, touching this and that. When she
came near him once, he put his arms about her timidly,
and gave her a clumsy caress. She squirmed away,
laughed, and prodded his broad chest with a slim
finger.

"Aren't you fat?" she teased irrelevantly. "I dare-
say you wouldn't feel it if I tried to beat you."

But he did feel it. Good heavens, to be over forty,
and have sweet and twenty laugh at one! Then she
folded his expensive silk shirts and socks, his innu-
merable ties, his fine linen handkerchiefs, with the care
of a child keeping house, and made herself very busy.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 71

and said she was sorry he was going. His trunk was
enormous; she said she could get into it, and proved
the fact. The extent of his wardrobe filled her with
frank amazement. People, she reflected, were very
interesting, when one saw them thus at first hand, sur-
rounded by the evidences of their own taste and per-
sonality. This was so unlike her own room; a bare
little cell, with queer sketches of her own on the walls,
one small battered trunk, a highly uncomfortable chair,
an imitation couch covered with real cushions, and a
pair of Japanese clogs pathetically toeing toward each
other in the centre of the room. They were always
in the centre of the room, never neatly arranged
against the wall. How out of place he would be there !
It made her laugh. But he broke in on her thoughts.
He had been pacing up and down, lighting and throw-
ing away cigarettes, watching her.

"Are you going to college?" he asked, at last,
abruptly.

Her own answer surprised her a little, for she said
involuntarily :

**No." And was sorry she felt forced to say it, for
he looked generously disappointed.

"Then what can I do for you?" he asked finally.

To that she had no answer.

This refusal had crystallised suddenly in her mind,
as the result of long, rather inchoate reflection.
Dimly she perceived that college would not give her
what she wanted. The end of college would be simply
the end of college, not the beginning of anything else.
She was seeking her youth, not trying to give it up,
to college or anything. What had college given to
Mary ? She would have read more books. She could
read them anyway. She would still have her start
to make ; the start for that indefinable goal, the heart
of Hfe itself.

72 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

His disappointment was evident. He lit another
cigarette, threw it away, and stood irresolute. She
jumped up and ran to him.

"Never mind, never mind," she comforted him. "It
was lovely of you. And I have no sense at all," she
concluded gravely.

"Not a bit," he agreed. "I think I'll put you in my
trunk again, and carry you about, and look after you.
Oh, Hope !" He crushed her in his arms, ruffling her
hair and temper, smothering her.

She felt cross, and sorry for him, all at once ; aware
of a conflict within him, but not alarmed. That beaute
du diable which she still possessed in its freshest bloom
drew him powerfully by the double bonds of tender-
ness and passion, and he suffered more than she could
have guessed. It divided his soul and body like a
sword, and he did not know himself what shook him
so. Before now he had sought refuge from his wife's
perverse coldness in the favours of other women,
women of the world; had taken carelessly what they
had given freely, and forgotten. But he had never
experienced anything like this extraordinary recru-
descence of half-forgotten boyish emotions.

Nor was it solely her youth that drew him. After
all, youth could be bought in the market, like any other
commodity.

He never held her but he knew she wished to be
free; the inner resistance was there, even while in-
stinct or courtesy kept it from expression. But he did
know she did not evade him to enhance her value, like
those shrewder creatures who can drive a bargain
from the cradle. Like his wife.

Not that he had these thoughts. Only a part of
his brain was active; the part which he used in the
making of money. He trained that.

He kissed the crest of her hair, while she sighed

THE MAGPIE'S NEST . 73

ostentatiously and was rigidly unresponsive, repulsing
him with her mind rather than with her body. So
he let her go. She went out. He heard the soft click
of her high heels down the hall, and hoped fervently
that no other ears might be listening.

There was no warmth in his heart at the prospect
of going home. He finished packing, and locked up
his baggage, feeling singularly alone. His wife prob-
ably would not be at home; she might be in town,
shopping, or visiting; she loved living in huge hotels
in a glare of publicity. Ten days before he had sent
her a wonderful sapphire ring for their wedding an-
niversary. She had not even acknowledged it. She
was not a beautiful woman, nor charming, nor bril-
liant, but her very hardness had given her a long
ascendency over him. Despite himself, he was essen-
tially a faithful man, craving affection, easily rebuffed.
And there is something in the name of wife that gives
a woman possession of certain keys to a man's inner
nature, if he has anything fine in him at all. She was
his wife, and in his young manhood he had given her
those keys. Nor can any gift be wholly revoked; the
period of possession can never be effaced.

His daughter was the only thing he had got out of
it all — a jolly little tomboy, slowly changing now into
an unusually frank and lovable young woman. Per-
haps she could come with him on his next trip. It
might save him from — he did not know quite what.
From trying, perhaps, to thrust unwelcome gifts on
another than his wife.

Now why would not Hope accept? He could not
see that it was, over again, his giving her the dollar.
She could not buy anything with it. She wanted
chocolates, and could not reach the market. But this
time neither could he buy them for her. And yet
it was a perfectly good dollar he was offering her. If

74 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

it puzzled her, it puzzled him still more. He thought
her exquisitely foolish — the more lovable for her im-
becility. He was the acquisitive type. He refused
nothing of value, reached out always for more, no
matter whether he could buy anything with his dollar
or not.

Well, it was train time. With a final thought of
her, a fatuous hope that she slept sound, he went out.

Though he could not know it, she was far from
sleeping. The car was miraculously recovered of its
late affliction. It streamed through the night like a
wandering earth-bound star ; the pale-grey, dusty road
rushed into its devouring radius of light and was in-
stantly swallowed again by the dark, endlessly, a de-
light and a fascination to Hope. She was at the wheel,
and Allen, beside her, kept a ready hand to correct
the errors of her fearful joy. He must reach his arm
about her to do it, but she had grown accustomed to
his quiet presence and it did not trouble her. They
talked, intermittently, cheek to cheek so they might
hear. Once she turned suddenly and felt his long
lashes brush her face, and laughed. She liked Allen,
and one reason was his forthright honesty, which cred-
ited hers, so that they stood on firm ground with each
other. He gave her less disquiet than any man she
ever knew. He was not stolid, either; he merely con-
trolled himself as perfectly as he did the big machine.
In their expeditions they found themselves in perfect
accord, intent on the one thing, the magic of the mo-
ment's chance. Their speech had the awful candour of
utter, uncalculating youth.

To-night he knew she had been saying good-bye to
Edgerton.

"Kinda mean of me," he meditated, "to sneak the
car his last night. Only a block to the station, though.
Did he say anything about it to you ?"

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 75

"How did you know I was there?" she asked, skid-
ding abruptly into a rut.

"Telephoned — you were out. Waited for you. I
followed you home." He laid a restraining finger on
the wheel.

"Well, you shouldn't have. That was mean."

"Oh, shucks! I knew you went there sometimes."
His drawl accepted the fact without comment, repro-
bation or innuendo.

She shook her head. "Never did, before. This is
more fun."

"Aren't you his girl?" questioned Allen directly.

"His girl? No, I don't think so. He's been nice
to me. I like him, of course. How do you mean ?"

"The limit," said Allen.

She took it in presently. It came to her in the light
of a problem. Why should he have thought so ? Not
being a hypocrite, she made no pretence of anger.
Though she did not realise it, that was because of
Allen's acceptance of her right to her own choice. Be-
cause he had never made it an excuse to be hatefully
presumptuous. But why ?

She asked him.

"Oh, well — he likes you, too. And he doesn't get on
with his wife. And he hasn't got a girl here." This
was elemental logic with a vengeance. But the force
of it could not appeal to any unawakened girl.

"Well, I don't see," she murmured vaguely. "I
think he's nice. He is to me. Has he got "

"Sure, he's all right," said Allen. "He had a girl
in St. Paul, I believe. But that was awhile ago."

"I'm not his girl," affirmed Hope.

"All right," said Allen. Allen played the cards as
they fell. "I believe you, if you say so. You can't
ever tell. I wish you liked me."

"I do," she said instantly.

76 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Oh, shucks!" said Allen. "You're a funny girl,
aren't you ?" And he retreated into silence for a time.

"You talk," she said finally, with a rather hopeless
air, "as if one had to "

"Oh, well, not just exactly that," he admitted. "But
— life's pretty lonesome. ... I like a girl . . . near
me. ... I used to know a lot of chorus girls in Chi-
cago; jolly kids. . . .

He was sufficiently explicit, until she mutely signed
"enough." Yet there was something primitively clean
in his confession. She regarded him with utter aston-
ishment, unaware that she had often aroused the same
sentiment in him.

"I think / rather like being alone, mostly," she said
at last.

"Sure, I know," he assented. "I can feel it. You're
away off. You're a funny girl."

It was two o'clock. And there was her front gate.

CHAPTER VIII

THE dressing-room was uncomfortably crowded ;
Hope found herself in a corner, remote from
a mirror and reluctant to take off her wrap
lest her assurance should go with it. The dreadful
feeling of being alone in a crowd assailed her; she
felt gooseflesh rising on her bare shoulders, and looked
about despairingly for Mrs. Patten and Mary. They
had promised to be there, and were late. Eleanor
Travers nodded casually, and went on powdering her
nose. Mrs. Shane appraised her with a long, insolently
inexpressive look and then turned, with an air of
contempt, and adjusted her gown over her hips with
a slight wriggling movement. Hope decided she would
be no more beautiful for seeing her own reflection
once more, and made her way to the door.

While she waited, drawing on her gloves, she could
see Ned Angell at the door of the other cloak-room,
evidently not yet expecting her ; he had his hand on the
shoulder of another youth, and they were both laugh-
ing, but in a confidential manner, as over a private joke.
So it was, rather, though of course Hope could not
know; they had just returned it to Ned's topcoat
pocket. Ned was in flannels, as were many of the
younger men; he even had a cummerbund instead of
a waistcoat, but he carried off his dandyism extremely
well, as a few men can, by appearing unconscious of
it. Hope thought she had never seen anyone look quite
so "finished" as he did ; she even forgave him for wear-
ing a seal ring on his little finger, and that his hand
was too small for a man's. His mouse-coloured hair,

77

78 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

brushed very sleek, had a high light to it, like lacquer.
He looked incredibly useless and gay; and was both.
But for a cavalier at a dance, he was all one could ask,
and more, Hope felt, than one so country-cousinish
as herself had a right to. Now he saw her, and came
across the room, and carried her off on his arm.

Inside the ball-room, a long bare apartment meagrely
festooned with dusty-looking bunting and forlorn
strings of Japanese lanterns against a glaring white
wall, she hesitated again, not knowing whither Ned
was guiding her but aware of some immediate duty
on his mind. He was taking her to the patronesses,
and she stumbled her way past them in an agony of
embarrassment, tearing a flounce on the sharp heel
of her slipper as she bowed to them. She got another
glance of appraisal there, from Mrs. Dupont, who
was Cora Shane's bosom friend — a simile which in
that respect implied an amplitude of affection on the
part of both. A new girl to them was a thing to be
considered. Mrs. Dupont, who looked like a Spanish
beauty well past her prime, dealt in masculine "fu-
tures," and was gowned from Paris. Ned Angell had
bored her with accounts of Hope. It gave her and
Cora a certain satisfaction to perceive the girl, on her
entrance, a dim little thing, obviously gauche.

Dim she was, gasping for breath, like a fresh-landed
minnow, in her new element. Ned could not strike a
spark from her, and he did like coruscations, fireworks.
A part of Hope's prettiness was her waxen delicacy
of complexion ; even her mouth was only pink. When
she felt dashed or ill it was as if a fine grey ash had
fallen on her. It fell on her now ; she looked forlorn,
and the odd gown she had chosen, admirably suited to
her glowing mood, seemed sombre. It was of black
lace, and her slippers were of blue satin; a ridiculous
blue rose blossomed on her shoulder; a black chiffon

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 79

band encircled her head, with a fluffy bow that was
meant to be perky. It had slipped a bit, and sat over
one eye, making her look lost and neglected, but very
quaint. Ned, beside her, felt humorously despairing.
He would have to hand her over to the men she must
dance with like — like a sick kitten, instead of permit-
ting them the privilege. He did not apply the epithet
harshly; no one could feel harsh toward a poor little
sick kitten.

He wondered why she attracted him at all. Some-
times so did she. Undoubtedly the attraction existed ;
more, perhaps, in her absence than otherwise. He
always went back to her, as if to look at her once
more and confirm a previous impression, or perhaps
hoping that at last she might realise some subtle antici-
pation. That she literally never heeded him at all,
neither his comings nor his goings, was part of the
charm. He could not imagine her waiting for him,
even unconsciously. During an interim she would go
on about her own affairs, just being herself. And it
might be she would develop a new phase, and he ought
not to miss it. He had had so many love affairs of
all kinds, he was not sure but this was a new kind
— when he was away from her.

They danced the first together, of course; her blue
satin shoes were light on the floor, at least. As her
card was not half-filled, he left her then to remedy
the matter. She subsided into a seat, pale, but evi-
dently of stoic courage. She was looking at the pa-
tronesses, with a touch of sly deliberation in her eye,
when Mary and Mrs. Patten found her and swept
down on her with subdued rustlings and laughter. It
was charming to see her eyes at once darken and light
up and the animation flow back to her face. The miss-
ing colour note was supplied to her tonal ensemble.
And she wanted to kiss Mary and Lisbeth; her eyes

8o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

said it, her mouth said it, without words. That kissing
expression was what made Tony Yorke, who had been
watching her with mingled pity and amusement, get
up from his chair and go in search of Ned. He de-
cided suddenly he wanted to be presented to her.

"Thank heaven," Hope was saying to Mary. *'Now
I want you to impress all these people indelibly on my
mind by telling me something horribly scandalous
about each of them. Begin with the patronesses."

They did begin with the patronnesses, who repre-
sented every shade of the town's evolution toward
"society," as Mary explained. From Mrs. Manners,
small, withered, terrifically dignified in her venerable
Vandyke gown of black velvet draped with real, if
soiled, old lace — who had brought her county tradi-
tions with her from England along with the gown and
preserved them inviolate through twenty years of
struggle with the rawness of a frontier town — to Mrs.
Lockwood, a walking advertisement of her husband's
trade as to avoirdupois, and his prosperity as to dia-
monds, they presented a complete social microcosm.

"Who," asked Lisbeth, "is that small fair woman
with Mrs. Lockwood ? Have I ever seen her before ?"

"Perhaps not; she is only visiting. Mrs. Lockwood
caught her in Banff. She," Mary smiled, "is a lady-
in-waiting to the Queen of Norway. Now she's talking
to Amy Bell; the Bell girls used to peddle milk,
and I always fancy Amy carries her muff like a
quart measure!"

"Cat!" said Hope. "Goon!"

But Ned interrupted, with a tall, dark-eyed young
man in tow, who looked at her with an air of recog-
nition.

Her name he knew; his mind always placed an in-
terrogation point after it. He had seen her times
innumerable. It was characteristic of the difference

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 8i

in them ; she had seen him, consciously, just once. He
knew what she did; vaguely, where she came from;
very definitely, what she looked like; and not at all
what she was. He had always been curious about her,
but only now in a personal way. At first he had
thought of her as "a girl Ned Angell took about";
later she was *'the girl with the feet" ; because of her
light and happy way of hurrying along. Then he had
seen her in Edgerton's car. Now Tony Yorke was
the child of his age, an unconscious worshipper of
success. Edgerton's interest in Hope — whatever na-
ture it partook of — invested her with a sort of value,
a speculative value, one might say. There must be
something in her. And Edgerton and Ned Angell —
extraordinary combination! She must be a queer
little devil.

He reserved judgment, in the way men do; a way
that allows them to feel very generous, since such a
reserved judgment is tantamount to no more than a
suspended sentence. Even admitting the worst, she
must be one of those really rare women who wear
their rue with a difiference. Edgerton's manner to her
convinced him of that. It did not quite convince him
of anything else. In respect of Ned Angell, their
presence here did convince Yorke; he could have
echoed Mary Dark's dictum from that — she must have
snubbed Ned! But Edgerton was different; he was
a big man in his way, and would act like one. Well,
there was the situation. He rather wanted to be on
the inside of it all, and was quite willing to grin with
her at Ned. But, after all, it was that sudden look
of hers made him forget every other reason, and
simply wish to meet her because he did wish to meet
her. And, his vision clear for a moment, he saw both
Ned and Edgerton explained in himself. But unfor-
tunately such moments of clairvoyance do not last.

82 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

For one thing, few of us are willing to admit in cold
blood that we are just exactly like other people.

His moment lasted the evening, at least. Hope, look-
ing up suddenly, smiled straight into his eyes, and held
out her hand, quite unnecessarily.

"But I know you," she said, and thought at the
moment she was telling the truth. So she rose and
let the music carry her away with him, without even
looking back at Mary and Lisbeth Patten.

Falling in love is not a faithfully descriptive phrase.
One soars up to love as to a sunlighted pinnacle above
a world of grey fog. Wings of enchantment are lent
for the occasion. The kingdoms of the world are
spread out before the transported victim, who promptly
spurns them. The falling occurs subsequently.

Then the bruised and bleeding creature who so
lately was a god sits painfully for a while estimating
injuries, and presently begins to pick up the pieces.
Generally it is found they can be got together in work-
able shape, with considerable effort, but nothing will
ever be quite the same again. But if the real gods
have had pity, they have surreptitiously put a grain
of common sense into the new mixing, so that the next
time love is achieved step by step, as an Alpine climber
mounts, and one takes pains to make love a little foot-
ing at the very top, where it may rest secure.

But the reason why anyone falls in love cannot be
told, for it is different in every case.

Tony Yorke had charm — a gift that no man has a
right to. That is because he can go to the woman he
desires and plead his own cause with no more shame
than his conscience puts on him. A woman needs
charm to bring her choice to her. When some wicked
godmother gives it to a man she means mischief. It is
an alien element and breeds trouble. By virtue of that
misplaced quality, Tony Yorke could not look at a

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 83

woman without his glance telling her that she was of
all the world the one person he would rather spend
the next hour with. He also looked at her as if they
were sharing some rather amusing secret, only they
two, against all the world.

When he gave Hope that reassuring, confidential
message with his eyes, hers answered with the same
joyful intelligence. She believed every word he did
not say. She dragged from the recesses of her soul
all the garments of romance that had been hidden there
for almost all the years of her life, and in the space
of one evening neatly cut and fitted them to his out-
ward measure and hung them about him willy-nilly.
And with a sweet shameless pride she did not care
if the whole ball-room knew it.

As a matter of fact, no one knew it. She did not
know it herself. It is the obvious thing escapes the
world longest. Even Ned Angell felt rather glad that
Hope had brightened up. She quite did him credit,
though he did feel a slight, indefinable unease. Per-
haps because he had at last found the expected, unex-
pected different phase in her.

He looked at her closely when he took her to sup-
per, or as closely as he could. Ned was the least bit
muddled. Hope knew he drank sometimes; but she
had never before had direct evidence of it. He had
the conventional decency for that. But now she was
absent-minded, and he saw it, and wanted to attract
her attention; he talked louder than was his wont.
Eating her cold chicken placidly, and aware through
her lowered lashes of every turn of Tony Yorke's
head at the far end of the long trestled table, where
he sat with Cora Shane, Hope woke to a sudden hor-
rified consciousness of what Ned was saying. More,
she felt what he was about to say; what he had said
was nothing.

84 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Ned," she said, in a low voice that was like a splash
of cold water, "be quiet. Or I shall leave the table."

It stopped him on a word ; he bit Mrs. Shane's name
in two like a cherry, and was silent. Hope looked
about swiftly. No one else had noticed. She looked
at Ned. He was sulking, wearing an air of injured
innocence. His smoothly-shaven cheek and shining
hair, his immaculate shirt-front and cuffs, everything
about him so clean and orderly and daintily nice, con-
tributed to that expression; and all these things he
had in common with everyone who sat there, eating,
drinking, laughing; and all these things, somehow,
seemed to make what he had been saying absurd.
These people, outwardly so carefully composed, in
painting phrase — they did not look as if there was any
evil in them any more than Ned did. But he had made
her, for one rather horrible moment, fancy a skeleton
at the feast, a skeleton for every feaster. It was as if
each who supped had a skeleton beneath the table, held
firmly underfoot, and Ned had wantonly tried to drag
one aboveboard. Hope saw the world in a glimpse.
Then she looked, openly, at Tony Yorke. There was
something so frank about his smiling eyes, his fresh,
tanned face. He looked good. She breathed freely
again. He met her gaze, and telegraphed her a quick
message. The next? She nodded.

They did not dance together. Instead, moved by a
common impulse toward solitude d deux, they found
an extraordinary little dusty stairway leading into the
darkness of the roof, at the upper end of the hall, and
sat there on Tony's handkerchief, peering through the
half-open door at the dancers, like an audience of two
looking on at the pageant of life, asking no more than
each other. It was draftily cool there, but they did not
feel it. Hope drew the tail of her lacy gown over

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 85

her shoulders; an unnecessary precaution. His mere
presence warmed her; his sleeve touching her bare
arm; more, the light in his eyes when, speaking,
they bent their faces close in such a movement
as preludes a kiss. They bantered each other a little ;
she loved to see him laugh, because he wrinkled his
nose a trifle and looked as if everything were much
funnier than one dared to acknowledge openly. She
was so immensely light-hearted on a sudden; and it
seemed, absurdly, to have something to do with the
way his hair grew off his temples — she loved his hair.
No doubt Delilah wept when she put the shears to
Samson, for every woman has a weakness for that
thick, springy hair which seems to denote youth and
vitality in a man. And she loved the laughter in his
eyes.

Ah, she loved the gay and gallant spirit she read
into him, of which these were the visible signs. But
he loved only the softness of her mouth, the virginal
delicacy of her low bosom where it sloped gently under
the shadowy lace, and her delicious, remote nearness.
His fine senses gauged her ; he knew at once that hers
slept, or only stirred in sleep, while yet her spirit
reached invisible, fearless tendrils toward him. He
was not sensual; he was sensuous, fatally open to
either appeal. There was a brief conflict in his mind,
while past conclusions battled with present conviction;
for she was not at all what he had thought her, but
she might yet be many things. How would the die
fall? That he meant to see.

The dance was a romp. Mrs. Shane played, for it
was an extra. They could see her, face averted care-
lessly from the keyboard, strong, supple hands com-
manding the keys with splendid precision. She too
was watching the dancers.

"Look," said Tony softly. "That's her husband!"

86 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

He passed his wife with Mrs. Dupont in his arms.
Her regal height dwarfed the little man ; his stout bow
legs bore him gallantly, moving with a deft precison
that gave the final touch of burlesque. In his wife's
eyes was a complete, impersonal appreciation of every
detail of his appearance, a terrible and humorous ap-
praisal, and a sort of mild and perpetual and — yes,
wicked astonishment. He was her husband I Her fin-
gers were little devils, casting nets for the enchanted
feet of her auditors; like the children of Hamelin,
they leaped to her playing, without volition. Cora
Shane was a genius in her way, and her way was the
playing of popular music. So she played, and her
husband danced, a figure of fun to the world. Tony
laughed quietly. It amused him a great deal. Such
things did. Even while he was most aware of Hope
beside him. She was watching, also.

"They're funny, aren't they?" she said.

Yet she did not see what he saw; to her they were
funny in an entirely different way, merely as human
beings, and in the sight of Heaven. But he was com-
paring what he saw with what he knew. She forgot
them; the figures on the floor became only a pretty
tapestry, of dark heads and fair, powdered shoulders,
trailing satins, masses of clear black and white. She
and Tony were alone, ringed about in a fairy circle.
To have stayed like that for ever, just so closely, barely
touching. Even a handclasp would have been too
much. It was strange, but he knew all her mind. He
made her tell him about herself a little. He even
spoke of Edgerton, and of Ned, and watched for her
colour to change, and it did not.

The figures on the floor wove and shifted. A cou-
ple, nearing their hiding place, swung out of the meas-
ured rhythm; the man stooped, handed a recovered
handkerchief to the girl, and paused a moment, his

THE MAGPIE'S NEST ^7

face full to them. Hope leaned forward, suddenly
tense, and her upper lip lifted.

"Who is that?" she asked very softly.

"Which ? Oh — Jim Sanderson. Know him ?" Tony
turned to her, noting that her cheeks had now the dis-
tress signal he had tried to provoke earlier.

"No," she said, still softly, with a definite note that
was like the closing of a door. "Do you ?"

"Long time," answered Tony. "He's a pretty good
scout."

She did not answer, and he spoke of something else
and forgot momentarily.

"I've cut a dance," said Hope presently. "Ned will
be furious. And there's a man looking for me. I
forget his name, but duty must be done !"

"You will give me one more, later," he said, not
questioningly.

They rose, more than half reluctant. She turned
her face up to him.

"I like you," he said, with the naivete whereby he
won women.

"I like you, too," said Hope, in a breathless whisper,
and stooped through the little door.

A distracted-looking youth came up and bore her off.

The dance was nearing an end when Tony claimed
her again. Just as the music drew them together, she
heard Tony speak, and turned her head to look full
into Jim Sanderson's eyes. This time her face did
not change at all ; but her own eyes gave the effect of
looking through a mask. Her head turned again
slowly away from him. Tony was aware of some
subtle by-play, saw Sanderson check a forward step,
nod, and vanish into the crowd. But the echo in his
ears of that closing door was plain. And, suddenly,
he felt her small gloved hand grip his arm tightly.

She touched him much as a child clings to its

88 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

mother's skirt as a talisman against unformulated
dangers, assuring herself of the solid presence of her
newly-elected knight. That he could not know, but
there was something confiding in her clasp; it moved
him not unpleasantly. His arm encircled her again ; in
silence they slipped into the maze.

"I shall see you again," he said, as he left her
finally.

"Shall you?'" she asked.

She did not try to bind him to a meeting. She was
happy in an extraordinary way that asked nothing
more. She had found him; she knew he was. That
was enough. Besides, it was not in her hands. He
had come; he would come again if Fate pleased, li
not, he would not come. In either case, she believed:
for her creed of romance had been made visible.

She did not hear one word Ned said to her, going
home.

Nor did she hear what Mrs. Shane said to Mrs.
Dupont as they lingered for a cigarette in the half-
deserted dressing-room while the band played a final,
extra extra.

"Who is she, anyway?" Cora's voice was languid.

"Ask Tony," suggested Mrs. Dupont, in the same
clipped, throaty tones. "They must have told each
other the story of their lives while they sat out those
three dances. I haven't seen him rush a girl like that
since — you came back!"

"Tony's a fool," remarked Cora, in the manner of
one who depreciates for form's sake a treasured be-
longing, as the Chinese do. Her friend's implication
did not displease her. "If we've got to meet her, we
ought to know something "

"Well, I'll ask him," said Mrs. Dupont agreeably.
"I'm going motoring with him to-morrow. Oh, didn't
you know?"

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 89

"I said he was a fool," reiterated Cora. And her
resolve hardened.

They kissed and parted. But only Mrs. Dupont
laughed as she went out. She had scored — twice.

CHAPTER IX

A FOOL'S paradise is quite as good as a phi-
losopher's heaven — while it lasts. And while
there is a vast difference in essence between
mere credulity and the trust engendered of good faith,
the result is too often quite the same. Julie de Les-
pinasse has not been reckoned wanting in wit, but
she never, even on her death-bed, perceived the asses*
ears of her utterly selfish and unmanly lover. Hope
was not another Julie, but neither was she a fool. In-
deed, she followed a very ancient wisdom, knowing
that

"The lovers that disbelieve
Evil speaking shall grieve,
And false witness shall part."

But it is too true that there is no wisdom that will
serve as a cloak for all weathers. And Hope was not
weather-wise.

She and Mary Dark were living together. They
took the half of a house from an old friend of Mary's ;
Mrs. Hamilton by name. They had three rooms,
transformed into a separate apartment, furnished with
grass chairs and cushions and bookcases mainly, with
a rag rug on the floor, chintz curtains, and a desk and
drawing-board. The desk Mary kept in her bedroom,
so she might sit there and read and write and smoke
cigarettes if Hope had guests. They had a geranium
in a pot and fussed over it with ineffectual pleasure.
Hope settled herself in the new rooms like a cat on
a hearthrug. Watching her darning stockings, or
sketching, or running ribbons through her lingerie,

90

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 91

Mary felt the same tender amusement one derives
from the antics of a kitten or a puppy. But some-
times, when Hope had one of her rare restless fits,
and prowled about softly, touching things here and
there or standing with her face pressed to the window-
pane looking down the dusty street, Mary's heart mis-
gave her. She connected it readily with Tony Yorke's
visits. He had called more than once. Ned Angell
came much oftener, taught Hope the guitar, and sang
to her, but Hope received him exactly as she did the
three boisterous Hamilton children.

Mrs. Hamilton was a remarkable woman, said Mary
briefly, and left Hope to discover the meaning of the
phrase. It was not too difficult. Mrs. Hamilton, with-
out a grain of intellect, possessed a steady intelligence,
a deep simplicity, and that genuine sweetness of soul
which St. Paul defines as charity. She knew very
few people and cared not at all ; she went out but little,
did her own housework, kept her own counsel and that
of her friends, and was sincerely fond of the two girls
without in the least desiring to regulate their conduct
or inquire into their affairs. Her children were kept
in order, and brought more pleasure than annoyance.

Mary had few callers, though she went out a good
deal. Occasionally Hope was asked, also, but the
thought of a gathering filled her with dumb misery.
Eleanor Travers had been to call on both girls ; there
was a faint undercurrent of alarmed curiosity in her
manner, struggling with an instinctive liking for
Hope. Mary had watched her with a lazy smile.
Hope felt baffled; then dismissed the remembrance,
and was glad Miss Travers was out when she returned
the call.

Once she asked Allen Kirby to the house. He came
readily, and was obviously ill at ease. She was "away
off," indeed. It was not the same girl who received

92 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

him in a trailing gown and offered him chocolate in a
fragile little cup as she who came flying out in short
skirt and jersey, to scramble into the big car and
crowd the engine to the limit of its capacity through
the adventurous dark.

Tony caught her in yet another phase. He came
unexpectedly, when she thought he had forgotten. If
he had never come, he would in time have become a
sort of private legend to her.

Mrs. Hamilton let him in, but did not trouble to
announce him. He found Hope a little dishevelled and
fatigued, in a ruffled print house-frock, holding the
Hamilton baby on her knee and telling him stories,
with a slightly absent air. She was hardly thinking
of the stories ; her mind was really occupied pleasantly
with the aspec^ of the room, which she had just dusted
and set in order. The geranium glistened from a late
watering, sitting in the window where it caught the
last daylight. The baby, with an expression of serious
rapture, repeated after her such phrases of the story
as caught his ear, and pored attentively over certain
pictures Hope had drawn to make it clear to his youth-
ful mind. She and Mary amused themselves so at
times. The stories Mary wrote, and Hope sketched
for them as they progressed. When they were fin-
ished, the girls tore them up, or allowed them to accu-
mulate in odd corners.

Hope did not rise at his entrance, but offered him
her hand, still clutching little Bobby with a kind of
desperation, and terribly conscious of her tumbled
hair. Bobby had pulled it down into her eyes, and
her collar was unfastened, and she felt too confused
to correct either negligence. It would have been like
decking herself for his approval, and she wanted him,
somehow, to accept her as "a poor thing, but his own,"
without garnishment.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 93

"How domestic you look," he said, laughing.

"But I am horribly domestic," she assured him.

He laughed again, and insisted on hearing the rest
of the story, looking at her sketches with real interest
and some amazement, such as most of us feel when
one we know displays a talent, however slight.
Achievement, to the majority of us, seems to be pos-
sible only to persons we do not know; super-beings,
not accessible in daily life.

"But you're alarmingly clever," he said, to her great
embarrassment.

She clutched Bobby till he squirmed, and murmured,
"No, no," very positively. Then the baby insisted on
being let go ; she led him to the door, came back and
sat down tentatively. She felt as if she must entertain
Tony, although she herself wished merely to sit and
see him opposite her. But she must have talked of
something, for they laughed a great deal in the next
half -hour, and at the end of it he was sitting beside
her on the cushioned wicker settee. The awkwardness
had passed.

Tony Yorke enjoyed life because he never knew
exactly what he was going to do, and so suffered no
disappointments, while at the same time everything
had for him the flavour of novelty. He had not meant
to make love to Hope when he set out to see her, but
neither had he any resolution formed against it. He
followed the line of least resistance. When he touched
her hand in taking a match from her fingers, he had
not meant to retain it, but he did. It lay in his, sub-
missive and yet uncertain; and then he captured the
other one and drew her toward him. It was dusk
now; she had not put on the lights, but her clear yet
clouded blue eyes, fixed on his, had an illumination of
their own, and her hands were pearly white in his
brown ones. She said nothing as he bent to her, but

94 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

watched him, and he waited on her word, ready to
release her, even while he still drew her closer. Then
her eyelids fell softly, and he knew he was going to
kiss her.

And when he touched her cool, trembling mouth he
knew that, however incredible it would have seemed
but an hour earlier, he loved her.

He had been aware of a kind of charm that had
fallen on them at their first meeting, but had afterward
put it down to the music, the excitement of the dance,
the exotic atmosphere of an assemblage of young and
light-hearted pleasure-seekers. Now, with her in his
arms, he knew she had sounded the deeps of his nature
— shallow water all, but all of him. He was essentially
a lover of women, not of one woman, but at the least
he loved them all for their fineness, and his own type
of woman was not the type that touched him emotion-
ally. Rather, perhaps, he was all things to all women
— but himself first and last.

His tribute was the conventional one, but still again
his best, and all he had, and even a little more. For
he spoke of marriage, not that night, but the next time.
And he knew quite well that, by his own standard, he
could not afford to marry. Subconsciously, he had
always expected to marry a girl with money. Not for
her money, but it would just happen so. Yet he said,
after Hope had come forward timidly and put her
hands in his :

"I'm going to marry you, you know."

"Are you ?" she said, and might have added, " *I
have laid my life at thy feet ; do as it please thee with
it, for what shall please thee is sweet.' "

But neither then nor ever was she able to put into
words to him all the romance and wonder he meant
to her. No doubt they would be married ; she had not
really thought of that, although she had often con-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 95

templated her own possible marriage before meeting
him. One had to be born; one had to die; one had
to be married also; these were the inevitable trilogy.
And since marriage was the only one of the three in
which the principal actor had any say, it lent itself
generously to speculation. Very erratic speculation.
But the fact is that, not out of lawlessness, but in
keeping with its own laws, romantic love does not
trouble about marriage. It can feed on moonlight,
nourish itself on sonnets. So to Hope the idea of
marrying Tony was quite by the way. But of course
if he said so they would be married. That would not
make any difference.

After he had gone, however, she treasured the
words, as a guarantee of the permanence of her hap-
piness. Him she had never doubted as loving her
always, but an instinct as old as time and the changing
seasons had warned her that this wonder would not
last. Not any more does one expect spring to remain
after its appointed period. Something, somehow,
would come between them, and leave her only a mem-
ory. To this absurd tangle of "for ever" and "but a
little while" Tony had brought the word marriage like
a sword, and the knot was cut cleanly. He had
spoken. He would overawe the face of Fate.

Mary noticed she no longer complained of the stag-
nation of life, though on the surface it was all the
same. At hazard, Mary guessed correctly: being in
love was itself an adventure, and all-absorbing. The
impatience of her moments of waiting for Tony was
not her old tugging at the leash. She even withdrew
as far as possible what tentative feelers she had thrown
out before. With Ned she was distrait to the point
of rudeness. He tried to sulk. She did not even
notice, and he returned, after telling Lisbeth and Mary
in strict confidence that she was a disagreeable little

96 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

beast and that only his high regard for them made
him tolerate her. She had always been high-handed
with Allen Kirby, but Allen's philosophy permitted
him to enjoy what he could get. He had never made
any claims. He was always ready, if she had nothing
better to do. And since she liked him very well, and
he had accepted with equanimity her first tacit defini-
tion of their relations, she did not feel that they in-
fringed upon Tony's possession of all that was herself.

But with Edgerton she was vaguely troubled, and
seemed to be in a perpetual retreat. He felt her slip-
ping away from him, half surmised the truth, but
could put no name to the cause. Of her life he knew
nothing except what she told him herself. And she
had the straightforward reticence of the truthful.
Clumsily he tried to hold her, accepting each rebuff
with a dogged gentleness that made her feel pitiful
toward him. At the same time she was at a loss to
understand what he wanted. He had so much already.

Once she voiced the question to Mary. Edgerton
had been to see her. He came but the once. The
last time he had been in town she had put him off
prettily, because she had an engagement with Tony.
Her rudeness smote her; in answer to a note Mary
had tossed in her lap, she had telephoned, told him
to call. He had been strangely unwilling, though
plainly he wanted to see her. But he came.

What she remembered most was the way his eyes
followed her about the room, as if photographing
every trivial gesture she made. When she gave him
her hand he tried to take her in his arms, and she said
"No, no," and avoided him. Afterwards, just as the
first time, she shyly gave him her cheek to kiss, as an
amende. But his uneasiness perplexed her.

"What is it ?" she asked. "Aren't you comfortable ?
Have a cigarette. I'm going to make some coffee."

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 97

It seemed he did not want coffee, and she sat ponder-
ing him. "You're different," was all she could make
of it.

"No, you are," he returned bluntly. "Well, I might
have known it would come. I say "

"Yes?"

"If — if anything goes wrong, if I can help you, let
me know." And he was for going. "Oh, why?" she
said gently. "It's early."

She held him by the lapel of his coat, looking up at
him engagingly, and he would have kissed her again.
But he knew too well she had nothing for him. And,
after all, with a heavy heart he knew he had nothing
for her.

"No, I must. I've got some things to see to. Emily,
my daughter, is coming up. I want you to meet her."

"I should like to," said Hope bravely, concealing
her horror and alarm at the idea of meeting a strange
girl.

There was a certain incredibility, too, about his
having a grown daughter. Hope had been bred to
the old order. A man married was married, and that
was the end of him. Edgerton, appearing always
alone, had somehow in her mind extricated himself
from that fixed position, and now it seemed she must
replace him, and he really would not quite fit. He
would not fit anywhere ; that was the trouble. A man
of his age. She had dissociated him from all that,
his age, his circumstances, his very physical appear-
ance, at last; she no longer felt inclined to giggle se-
cretly at the spectacle of his grey hairs abasing them-
selves before her triumphant youth; and now she
would have to laboriously recreate him in her mind.
Actually, she never did. It would have comforted him
to know that, strangely. But he never did know it.

98 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

After he had gone she interrogated Mary, as she
had been wont to question Agnes.

"He must be worried about something," she said
sagely, interrupting Mary's peaceful scribbling in the
bedroom. "He seemed to be on pins and needles."

"It was me," said Mary, disregarding syntax, and
further replied to Hope's stare. "He wondered where
I might be; he feels rather silly before me. Did he
ask?"

"No. Was that it?"

Mary nodded, smiling.

"Certainly. He could feel my eye gimleting through
the keyhole. Wicked child, why don't you let that
poor man alone!"

"I don't do anything to him," said Hope indignantly.

"Horrid little flirt," said Mary calmly.

"I am notr

"No ? What then do you want with all those men ?"
Mary's voice, sweetly lazy and receptive, wooed to
confidence.

"Only four," Hope protested. "I don't flirt with
them. I" — she paused a long time — "Maybe you can
understand. It's like this: there are so many things
I'd like to do and see and feel, all at once; I should
like to reach out in every direction. I wish the world
were an orange and I could eat it "

"An apple, you mean," murmured Mary. "Well?'*

"When I hear of a strange country, I long to be
there immediately," Hope pursued resolutely. "To
read of some new discovery makes me wish I were at
the inventor's elbow; to hear of a big adventure fills
me with an awful longing to have experienced it. And
I'd like to be a man ; but I'd like to be a woman, too.
Of course I simply can't have any of those things.
But Ned and Allen and Con Edgerton and all of
them" — she hesitated obviously over Tony Yorke's

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 99

name — "they're my foreign countries, my other lives.
I explore them and watch them ; I take some of their
lives from them. Because they let me see themselves.
So do you, maybe Lisbeth does ; but no one else. Peo-
ple in a crowd aren't interesting. A crowd brings
out points of resemblance; in extreme cases it turns
into one creature, a mob! But that wasn't what I
started to say, was it?"

"No," said Mary. "Never mind, je vous comprends.
Yes — 'But he who lives more lives than one, more
deaths than one must die.' "

"Pve died a million times here in the last two
years," retorted Hope. "I think I'm getting used to
it now."

"You don't fidget so much," agreed Mary. "But is
that it? Is— it ?"

There was no answer.

"Aren't you engaged to Tony Yorke ?"

Hope looked up quickly, her eyes round with sur-
prise, a defensive blankness clouding them.

"Why do you ask that?" she parried.

"Because I have no manners," Mary smiled. "Now
aren't you ?" But her real reason she could not tell.

"Yes," said Hope, rosily shamefaced and a little
proud. "But I'll never forgive you if you tell any
one. You won't, will you?"

"Not unless you say I may," Mary hesitated. "But
you ought to announce it. Did — did Tony ask you
not to?"

"No, of course not," said Hope placidly astonished.
"We never spoke of it. Who cares, anyway ? No one
would be interested, except maybe you and Lisbeth.
And I don't want to be served up with the sandwiches
at every afternoon tea from now till next year. If
you tell I'll hate you !'*

100 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"As you say," agreed Mary, secretly resolved to
alter that decision. "When shall you be married?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sometime." Hope laughed
happily.

"It will be never," said Mary to herself. But aloud
she spoke, "I forgot to say the usual thing, my dear.
But you know I hope you find the magpie's nest."

"What magpie's nest?" inquired Hope, round-eyed
again.

"A fa^on de parler, dear ; the French say happiness
is to be found in a magpie's nest. Because the magpie
always builds out of reach!"

Hope smiled to herself, with deep assurance.

"But I forgot to ask you," she said, "what does Mr.
Edgerton want?"

Mary, in silent despair, refused to answer.

CHAPTER X

GOSSIP that builds up slowly, like accretions to
a coral reef, is more dangerous and difficult
than a rumour that runs like sudden flame in
dry grass. That will burn itself out, and new grass
grow. But the other remains, fetters its hapless ob-
ject; unless it concerns one of unusual mental and
spiritual stature, who can calmly rise clear and use it
as a footing. And that takes time.

These tiny, ever-increasing tributes of idleness and
malice Mary dreaded for Hope, saw them piling about
her, and was helpless. Warn her ? It would not help.
The girl might struggle to amend, but wanted experi-
ence to perceive her error. She would be simply over-
whelmed, frightened and sickened of the unprovoked
baseness it would seem to show her in human nature.
She had never injured anyone; lacking the flavour
of reprisal, the attack would seem merely wanton.
Hope still had that terrible sense of poetic justice
discernible in young, and, unhappily, inarticulate chil-
dren. She would see herself punished for an unin-
tended fault. She would not know how to recover
herself and strike back, and the wound would be
poisoned thereby.

There was nothing to be done. And perhaps luck
would incline the other way. If there was such a
thing as fool's luck — well, Hope deserved it. She
juggled her own fortunes as carelessly as if they were
ivory instead of crystal.

Emily Edgerton's visit, though delayed, had materi-
aHsed. She was much lunched and refreshed with

102 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

vast quantities of tea by the local ladies, but Hope
had met her first. Emily was just eighteen, but tall
and well-grown, attractive with health and good na-
ture and her father's millions. She was brown, and
rather pretty; brown eyes, brown hair, a few golden
freckles, and a figure rounded from tennis and danc-
ing. She was armed point-de-vise with that knowl-
edge of security which is the portion of daughters of
the rich. Hope wondered and envied. Mary under-
stood, and wished Hope might have a few years of
the same ease, to put her on her feet.

This was at tea, and they were planning some way
to pass the evening without boredom — a difficult thing
in that city. Nothing offered but a second-rate theat-
rical performance; it would undoubtedly be second-
rate, since none others came so far from the centres of
civilisation. But Edgerton and Emily professed them-
selves quite willing to take what chance there might
be of a smile, and while he was thinking whom he
might ask to complete the party — "I'd feel altogether
too greedy, with three pretty women to myself," he
said — Tony Yorke was observed on the veranda. He
was brought in, like the wedding guests who were
gathered in the hedges and by-ways; and the party
was declared filled, for their box would not possibly
hold more than five.

So they sat very splendidly in the stage box; there
were only four boxes and they were all stage boxes.
One could not see all that went on on the stage, but
Mary said the audience was much more amusing any-
way. From the other side of the house, Mrs. Shane
nodded to Mary, scrutinised Hope through an opera-
glass and smiled at Tony.

Tony and Mary tossed the ball between them at
first. She knew him, heart and soul, reading him,
perhaps, through another she had once known. But

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 103

she had grown clever now ; so that he could not guess
how clever she was. "A silly muddle," she was say-
ing to herself before the evening was well begun,
looking at Hope, slim and shrinking in her black gown,
with drooped lids, so that Mary's eyes outshone her,
and the rose of Emily Edgerton's cheek. With a little
pang at heart Mary saw that Edgerton still turned to
her. After all, he was twice the man Tony was; it
had never been her surface that had caught him. For
all his simplicity, he phrased himself very neatly,
apropos of what Mary did not catch.

"I can see through a ladder when there's a lantern
on the other side."

"Well, daddy, I always told you I wasn't a ladder,"
remarked Emily cheerfully, and pinched his arm.
That was about the depth of the conversation.

"Aren't you ?" murmured Hope idiotically, and they
laughed until Mrs. Shane heard them.

"Are you?" asked Tony very seriously, addressing
Hope.

She rallied.

"Yes, I am," she declared. "Anyone can see
through me, or put a foot on me." Her eyes acknowl-
edged that he at least could.

"Your vocation," said Mary, "is evidently marriage."

"Marriage isn't a vocation," returned Hope lightly,
swimming on the tide of her own frivolity; "it's an
accident. And accidents never happen to me; I'm
always on the verge of them, right under the chariot
wheels, you may say, but some rude person always
rescues me."

She avoided Tony's glance as she spoke. Another
woman would have looked at him with coquettish
denial of her words. Mary saw Hope's attitude in
advance ; what hurt and shocked her despite herself
was that Tony too looked deliberately preoccupied and

104 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

gay. Ah, he should have been possessive, given him-
self away. He left his rightful part to Edgerton — who
accepted it. It was a muddle, indeed.

"Oh, you'll marry," said Edgerton rather gloomily.

She shook her head, contradicting, with a little lift
of her eyelashes at him.

"Why do you think so ?"

But he did not seem able to say. Tony had fallen
into a low-toned conversation with Emily Edgerton;
Mary, smiling dreamily out over the orchestra, felt
like an exceedingly exclusive audience. Tony had got
Emily's fan, and they retreated behind it, and Emily
dimpled and smiled — she was really rather charming,
and Tony's eyes had not forgotten their old trick.
"The next day?" Mary heard him ask. "Perhaps,"
said Emily. "Shall we all go?" She looked at the
others. "If you like," said Tony gallantly.

Later, he confessed to himself that the idea of squir-
ing a nursery chit for a whole afternoon's ride out
to the big dam was rather boring — since she had not
included the others, despite her query — but, hang it,
she had been openly expectant of his pursuing the
acquaintance. It was plain she had taken Tony's in-
clusion in the party as for her special benefit; Mary
and Hope were her father's friends, and he was her
sop, tribute of custom to the debutante, a man for her
vis-d-vis. At eighteen, Emily had been practically
"out" for a year, and knew her social dues. She
thought it rather good of the other two women to
leave Tony to her so unreservedly. Especially since
he was so — well, so "nice." Her summum cum
laude of masculine perfection was to be "nice." She
was herself very nice indeed; and, if her world was
all surfaces, she had some of her father's own quali-
ties latent in her. Stirred by some singular prescience,
toward the end of the evening Mary drew her out.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 105

dropped a metaphorical noose over her — and had her
ready to bring to hand later if she should need. What
the need might be, she did not know yet.

Well, the evening was over. In the lobby Mrs.
Shane captured them, pressed them to supper, all of
them. It was Edgerton who did not want to go, and
it was Mary who, having learned to read his Long
Primer print very easily in her elbow-to-elbow work-
ing hours with him, made their excuses. It was Mary,
too, who heard Tony promising that he might be
there later. She grimaced, hiding it under her hood.
Was a man so avid of the moment's distraction worth
luring? But that was for Hope to settle, not her.

"We'll get enough of the Shanes to-morrow,'* said
Edgerton bluntly to Mary. "We've got to dine with
them."

Mary nodded. Shane was involved in Edgerton's
latest deal, for the power rights on the Kenatchee
Falls.

Dine they did, and Tony was at that dinner, too.
He had been of the theatre party by accident; he
was always at Mrs. Shane's dinners — Cora Shane said
to all concerned that she needed him to mix the cock-
tails— and thereafter, because of the sheep instinct in
people, he was everywhere asked where Emily Edger-
ton was asked, which was everywhere, merely because
people knew of the two initial occasions.

If he had wished just such a development in the
first instance, it was by no means on account of Emily
herself. He needed the financial backing of Edgerton ;
he had staked all his own money, and some he had got
from his mother, not an enormous sum, on the Ke-
natchee Falls deal, and without Edgerton's help, he
might just as well have set it sailing down the Bow
River in paper boats. Shane's backing could do no
more than get him a hearing and give him a little

io6 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

local prestige, for Shane, though growing rich as a
small city counts riches, had many irons in the fire
and needed all his loose capital for himself. But a
word, a scratch of the pen, from Edgerton would
unlock the vaults of any of the powerful banks; he
could command money enough to dam the Bow with
silver if he chose. He had more than money, he had
credit; he was a man who never lost.

By sheer tenacity, the ability to play a waiting game,
Edgerton had recouped himself time and again in
deals where one less long-sighted would have given
up and admitted defeat. And there were not a dozen
men in the Northwest of whom so much could be said.
Boom times do not breed shrewdness. Edgerton had
not floated in on the tide of any boom; he had made
his start a dollar at a time, and never forgot what a
dollar cost in actual effort. He was the one man Tony
Yorke wanted.

But it had to be soon. The franchise was already
granted, passed but a few weeks before by a gratified
Assembly at Edmonton. A provincial election im-
pended within another twelvemonth, with a threat of
an overturned government. The fear of that unde-
sirable consummation had forced even the secret share-
holders of the company, who sat in the Assembly, to
assent to an obnoxious rider to the bill calling for cer-
tain work upon the power plant to be completed within
the year — expensive work. There were ways, cer-
tainly, to obtain a postponement, but they were also
somewhat expensive. They would be doubly so with
a new provincial cabinet, hungry from enforced ab-
stinence, to appease.

"With me," Shane told Tony frankly, "it's a gamble ;
and I'll have to pass up the next raise. I've reached
my limit. But if we can get Edgerton — why, we'll
just be taking over the bank, that's all. We'll have

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 107

the percentage on our side. I hope we can get him.
But he's a singed cat for caution. And it's no use
crowding him."

That was very well for Shane ; he played within his
means. But Tony had put all he had on the table;
he had to win.

Pennington Yorke — that was his full name, though
he had nearly forgotten it himself — had begun his
financial education at the wrong end: he had learned
how to spend money before he knew anything about
making it. In four dizzy years at college he had dis-
persed the nucleus of a comfortable fortune. There-
after he had been in the position of the Chinaman who
went tobogganing, as he explained once to Hope:
"Whizz-z-z — go down like helle — walk back six
miles !" The walk was long, and he would dawdle by
the way and follow side-paths that attracted him.j
And tactically he had made a mistake in coming West,
lured by the fabulous tales of equally fabulous wealth
to be picked up over night.

All his personal assets here were valueless : connec-
tions, charm, social polish he found quite useless in a
place where the social order was just emerging from
a pastoral democracy. Energy was wanted, for these
people were laying foundations, not adding the last
touches and decorations; he was as little needed as a
mural painter would be when only the framework of a
house is built, and his rewards were commensurate.
True, he had friends; and from them he got friend-
ship of a sort — just what he gave, in fact, which was
just what he did not need. At home he could if he
had chosen to be a little patient have come into his
own; but he had no patience, and the West looked
to him like an industrial faro game, where everything
might be won on a single turn of the wheel — and noth-
ing lost, if one had nothing to lose.

io8 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

He had, certainly, got Shane's countenance and
support. Mrs. Shane saw to that. She was bored
a good deal; she and Tony had in common a
million trifles and a large selfishness. Shane liked
Tony too, but if Cora had disliked him, she would
have seen to it that her husband shared her feelings.
As it was, Tony told her all his affairs, or, at least,
all his financial affairs, and she sympathised with
him. Nothing is easier, when one does not have to
suffer through those affairs. She had even tried to
help him with Edgerton; it was one of her notable
failures, and it stung, rather. She did not forget it,
though she had the wit to leave alone the further
conduct of the business end of matters.

Bred to the current social code, her smouldering
resentment did not prevent her being entirely amiable
and gracious toward Emily Edgerton. After the din-
ner, she contrived that Emily should pay her duty call
without her father; no hard matter. Mrs. Shane
lived in one of the streets of trees ; her house, though
small, had an inviting porch covered with vines.
Within, the furnishings had the charm of com-
fort and taste in daily use. The three rooms
stretching across the front were practically in one,
and gave the needed setting for a grand piano at one
end, a carved oak sideboard at the other, and deep
soft chairs everywhere. There were flowers, great
pink roses, nodding to their own reflection on the
polished surface of the piano top. A darning basket,
filled with silk stockings, beside them, in some curious
way added the last touch necessary to express the
mistress of the house. To Emily it looked elegantly
Bohemian, and she was thrilled by Mrs. Shane's cigar-
ette, tossed aside when she came in, but flagrantly
burning, sending up delicate little blue spirals in
betrayal.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 109

Mrs. Shane rallied the girl, not too obliquely, about
Tony Yorke, pumped her dry of all relevant and
irrelevant information, filled up the vacancy with the
pleasantest of impressions, and produced Tony, finally,
as a conjurer brings a rabbit out of a hat. Tony him-
self had not at all expected to see Emily, but he
supported the encounter with equanimity. Her quick
blush at his entrance was not unflattering; naturally,
he could not know what Cora had said not more than
five minutes before. But they had had the pleasantest
of rides, as Emily admitted by merely mentioning it :
what a woman remembers is a good index to what
she likes. On the whole, that sapient observation is
no less true of men.

The half-hour following amused all three very
much ; Emily had all the jeune Hue's pleasure in being
almost shocked; Cora and Tony all the amusement
of talking their own language over the head of an
unconscious third party. And Tony told himself that
after all Emily hardly deserved to be called a "nursery
chit." Some day she would be a thorough woman of
the world, and the reading of her unfulfilled promise
was in its way as interesting as would be the con-
templation of her final perfection. Bread and butter
she might be as yet, but it was "the best butter."
Besides, Tony had rather a liking for bread and butter,
not unusual in a man who has sampled other and at
times too pungent fare. It sharpens the palate, for
one thing. Yes, Emily — Miss Edgerton, of course, in
his audible address of her — had all the points, physical
and mental. He found himself surveying with pleas-
ure the fine, almost imperceptible curve in the line
from under her arm to her slender hip ; a rare beauty,
which only the connoisseur observes. She had a well-
turned wrist and ankle, too.

She was quite aware of his scrutiny, but did not

no THE MAGPIE'S NEST

change colour; only surprise had brought that first
blush. Quite naturally her truly innocent, girlishly
immature mind set it down to honest admiration, per-
haps dawning love. There is a stage of awakening
consciousness, still clean of passion and therefore un-
shamed in the wildest flights of imagination, when
youth perceives in every new acquaintance of the op-
posite sex a probable lover. The earthy substance in
which love must root is ignored ; Emily was saved the
embarrassment of reading anything grosser into
Tony's gaze. In fact, it was not there ; he could take
an almost impersonal pleasure in the sight of a pretty
woman, as a work of art. And he was now preoccu-
pied with Hope.

"I'll take you to the Falls next time," he told Emily,
laughing. "It's only fifty miles."

" 'Sir, you go too far,' " answered E^ily. "But — I
rather should like to see them. Are they pretty? I
believe I'll ask daddy to take us up in the car. That's
where he's going to build the power plant, isn't it?"

"Very pretty," assented Tony, exchanging a glance
with Cora Shane. "So he is going to, is he?"

"Why, I suppose so," said Emily carelessly. "He's
always doing something; I'm sure I heard him speak
of it. Shall we consider it settled — going there, I
mean ?"

"Both, if you like," said Tony. "You evidently
have a good deal of influence with your father, young
lady."

"He spoils me horribly," agreed Emily. "I always
tell him he has no right to ruin my character just to
gratify his own selfish pleasure in giving me things —
and he does it just the same. He'll be waiting for
me now; he zvill dine at six o'clock. Good-bye, Mrs.
Shane." She gave her hand to Tony, and her eyes
therewith.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST in

They watched her graceful progress to the front
gate, where Allen Kirby waited with the motor. She
sprang into it, smiled and spoke to Allen, turned and
waved her hand, and was borne out of sight, a little
princess of democracy.

CHAPTER XI

AGINN fizz, quick, Tony," said Mrs. Shane,
yawning and stretching out a trim pair of
ankles. *'She's a darling child — but ten
minutes more and I'd have expired, a perfect lady
to the last. Dio mio, to think that ten years ago I was
just like her !"

"The grace of God has stretched a long way in ten
years," said Tony cryptically, going to the sideboard.

She smiled vaguely, losing the allusion. When she
smiled, Cora Shane was singularly sweet. The ten
years seemed to melt into the dimple at the corner of
her red mouth; the curve of her cheek was flawless;
even her bulk — for she was a large woman — only
gave her an infantile softness. And her lovely, lucent
sapphire eyes seemed to gather a tender light. One
forgot that she had an ugly nose and no waist-line.

"Oh, yes," she assented, musing. "Really, really,
I was the nicest child. By the way, any progress ?"

"Nothing new," said Tony. "Didn't friend husband
report?"

"Yes, but you saw Edgerton afterwards. Pull hard,
Tony. It means Europe for me. I don't want to
wait three years, as I must if this falls through. Be-
sides, I'd like to see you win."

"It's good to have a friend," said Tony, and, as she
took the foaming glass, kissed her wrist.

It was only his way; she knew it — but she liked it.

"How I'll hate to give you up, Tony," she sighed.

"Weill Is Lent approaching?"

"Oh, don't be stupid. I was just thinking ahead.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 113

This will cut your rope ; you'll go away too, or marry.
High time you did, and stop philandering. Seen Miss
Fielding lately?"

She prided herself on her bluntness. And she did
not miss the quick, calculating look he flashed at her.

"Oh, twice a day or so," he assured her jestingly.
"Rather a propos des hottes, aren't you ? You do get
the weirdest hunches, Cora."

"I thought you might have, with the Edgertons,"
pursued Mrs. Shane coolly. "What do you make of
that, anyway!"

"Of what?"

She shrugged.

"Oh, you know what people are saying. A man in
his position, too! Men are all fools." Cora Shane
even thought in cliches, which was why her set ac-
counted her clever. To them cleverness was a
formula.

"Guilty in general," said Tony. He was gazing at
a pattern of the wall-paper. "But do be more explicit.
Who's been doing what?"

"Really, how should I know ? Eleanor Travers was
here yesterday, and was absolutely up a tree about
the invitations for their dance next week — you're go-
ing, of course. Someone had said something. Wanted
to know if she should ask Miss Fielding. She has to
ask the Edgertons, and Mary Dark, and Lisbeth Pat-
ten. Either way, she's afraid of committing a betise,
I told her I'd ask the devil if I wanted. But I only
shocked her." She laughed.

"But what did she hear?" said Tony gravely.

"I tell you / don't know. Jim Sanderson has some
story; says he used to know her "

"Jim ?" said Tony, darkening. "Did he tell you so ?"

"No. I had it all second, third, fourth hand. You
ask him. And she goes out in Edgerton's car."

114 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"What a rotten little hole this is," said Tony sav-
agely. Because she did go out in Edgerton's car.
Had he not seen her once? "She goes out with Miss
Dark sometimes. In the motor, I mean. And she's
known him for years. There's a clever girl, that
Miss Dark. I believe she could almost swing this
deal for us. The women here are all cats — saving
your presence, ma'am." He wanted to turn it off
lightly. And he wanted to hear more, if more there
was.

"Oh, well, I have nothing against her," conceded
Mrs. Shane handsomely. "She seems a queer little
waif ; I've never heard her say a word but yes and no.
Ned Angell led us to expect an intellectual prodigy.
And of course you know the — ah — cats have hung
your scalp at her belt. Does she say yes or no ?"

"Both, as you observed," returned Tony promptly,
his surface unruffled. "Damn the cats!" So he sold
her, with that kiss on Mrs. Shane's wrist ten minutes
before. "She is clever, really; sketches the quaintest
things."

"Why couldn't she turn the trick for you," asked
Mrs. Shane amiably, "if Mary Dark won't? And
then there's still another chance."

"Show it to me," said Tony.

"I said it was time you married. There's Emily.
What more could you ask ?" She studied him covertly.

"Cora, you will absolutely drive me to a blush,"
said Tony equably. He was inwardly conscious of a
slight exasperation, a feeling that Cora was capable
of forgetting good taste. "I could ask no more, and
should get a great deal less. Why are you so set on
springing the fatal trap on me? What have I done
to you?"

"Stolen my young heart," said Cora, with a ringing

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 115

laugh. "Never mind ; at my age it isn't serious. But
if you had sat out three dances with me the first time
I saw you, Heaven knows "

He reddened.

She said no more. But, after he had gone, she was
distinctly irritable, pondered over her dinner, and
snubbed her husband until he took himself off to the
club. And her own idle suggestion took root in her
mind. Emily Edgerton — why not ? Could he be such
a fool as to be thinking seriously of Hope Fielding?
A little outsider. That was her grievance, crystallised.
Those who credited the report that she had a deeper
right than mere friendship over Tony forgot how ex-
quisitely selfish she was. Sometimes that will safe-
guard a woman's virtue quite single-handed. And if
Tony feared her a trifle, as he undoubtedly did — why
else had he lied so valorously and subtly but now? —
it was half because he never cared to antagonise the
— to him — really amusing set she represented, and
half because she was stronger than he, in will. Be-
sides, every man is afraid of every woman. He con-
siders her either sub- or super- or else merely extra-
human ; she is a superstition with him.

As for Mrs. Shane, Tony belonged to her set — to
her. That extraordinary jealousy of the unplaced
women, of the gay little unconsidered privateers flying
no flag but their own, so often felt by their secure
sisters, had her. It has deep roots, that jealousy.
The very security of such as Cora Shane, their liveli-
hood, is menaced by those others. Have they not given
up the right to their own flag for an assurance of their
own menkind, and all that rests on their menkind,
the whole foundation of their lives? To have him
marry Emily Edgerton would not hurt. It would, on
the whole, be an acquisition to their set. But Hope —
that would be treachery. In short, he should not.

ii6 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

There was an end to it. Well, she had done what
she could.

It was something, also. Going the idle rounds of
hotel and club that evening, Tony woke with a start
of disgust to the knowledge that he had been looking
for Jim Sanderson. Revulsion carried him forthwith
to Hope, but there was a little devil of curiosity prick-
ing his brain. For a long time now it had been quieted,
drugged by the sweetness of her lips at first, again
by the cold fact of Edgerton taking Hope out with
his daughter for the world to note. But he was
harassed by the knowledge that both Edgerton and
Hope were greater individualists than he; he knew,
instinctively, that their actions would not square with
what impulses would move him to like actions. Mud-
dled, of course, but he could get no nearer a definition
of his perplexity. Ned Angell, in like case, being a
sentimentalist, would never have perceived the funda-
mental discrepancy, and so would have been satisfied.
But Tony did ; and his bewilderment annoyed as much
as it hurt him. He fell back, with unconscious irony,
on Cora Shane's word : they were outsiders. He had
let Hope into his very heart, and she was an outsider
still! A horrible miscalculation, somewhere. The
changing order of things has laid many traps for such
as Tony Yorke; they were better off, selfishly con-
sidered, in the days when there were just two kinds of
women, their own kind and the others.

So, depressed and tormented, with the images of
Edgerton and Ned Angell inimically before his mind's
eye, he came to Hope's door. She answered his ring
herself. She wore a big white linen apron; she had
a smudge of charcoal on her nose and her hair in a
braid ; and she walked through the mist of his brood-
ing reflections straight to him. They vanished; there
remained only a little girl with a smudged nose and

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 117

trustful eyes ; and he kissed her and gave himself up
to the moment. It was impossible to detect the flavour
of anything intrigante about her; her sweet stupidity
— the obverse of a directness which was itself as much*
a defect as a virtue — her very plainness, made the
idea ridiculous. For, on analysis, she was plain; one
cannot defend a title to beauty on the strength of a
pair of pretty ears, a lovely throat, the sea mist colour
of her round sleepy eyes, and a braid of hay-tinted
hair, from which two short feathery curls escaped
at the nape of her neck.

A tiny dent in her upper lip, a delicate depression
at the apex of her collar bone, delighted him; he
kissed them, and cuddled her like a pet kitten. She
was always grave with him, undemonstrative, like a
too thoughtful child. Mostly he loved that reserve,
but to-day it exasperated him. It was typical of the
thing that troubled him. What was beneath it all?
What was she thinking? More, what was she?

"I don't believe you care for me at all," he said at
last, half teasingly, half in too much earnest. "You're
the coldest creature. You just love being loved."

"No, no — I don't — I'm not " She struggled vis-
ibly for words. The best she could offer was, "I'd —
love you just as much, if I could never touch you.
If you didn't care for me. If I could just see you
sometimes. You don't understand."

To his horrified surprise, he perceived two tears
forcing themselves between her lashes. He comforted
her, almost alarmed, ready for once to admit to a
woman, with no reservation of a smile, that he cer-
tainly did not understand. She made no more effort
to explain, and he muttered again, half resentful of
her admission that his caresses were not essential :

"But you are cold!" and owned to himself that he

ii8 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

had tried in vain to melt her. To turn the subject,
he inquired for Mary Dark.

"She's at the office yet," said Hope. "Edgerton is
going away to-morrow, I beHeve, and they are tre-
mendously busy with — with some new scheme or some-
thing."

"The Kenatchee Falls business ?" asked Tony, eager
for news.

"Maybe," said Hope, dissembling badly.

It was clear to him that she knew something of the
matter. But it might be from Mary.

"If he'll only take it up," said Tony, and walked
about the room nervously. "You know, lady-bird, it
means a lot to me — to us. If it goes — we needn't
wait any longer. I'll carry you off in a minute." The
faint red ran into her face; she nodded. "Have you
any idea how he stands ? You're pretty good friends,
aren't you?" His tone was elaborately casual.

"Yes, in a way," she assented. "But I don't really
know anything about his affairs." That was not true,
and it distressed her to have to lie to Tony, but she
could not betray confidences.

She thought it not quite fair of him to try to pump
her, and was still more astounded when she caught his
actual intent. He wanted her to help sway Edgerton
in his favour ! He did not say that exactly ; his words
were covered with an "if" and other indirections. But
that was the meaning. At first she did not know why
it hurt, but two reasons crystallised out of the inward
refusal that surged up. First, she really knew nothing
of the project, so far as its intrinsic merits went. It
would be absurd of her to recommend it. Besides,
Edgerton certainly knew both his own mind and his
own business. She could not imagine him as moved
by her pleading. And then, Tony should not ask
help of that kind from her; it was not a man's part.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 119

He ought to stand on his own feet. In truth, she was
dangerously unsophisticated ; no one had ever told her
just how much more than kissing went by favour.

"Oh, I couldn't do anything," she murmured. Her
choice of phrase conveyed the exact truth.

"Well, I hope we'll get him anyway," said Tony,
but somehow he felt as if he had come up against a
blank wall, and the mists gathered again. Hope had
shut him off from something in her mind. What was
it? The door had closed in his face, just as once be-
fore. When she had spoken of Jim Sanderson ! He
wanted to ask her about that, but she had been so
exceedingly definite in the first instance. A question
would be pointedly meaningless, and he could not think
of a plausible excuse for bringing in Jim's name.

"Yes, I hope so," said Hope, and she did, most
earnestly. She wanted him to have what he wanted,
but she wanted him to get it for himself — and for her.
He had said it was for her.

"If it falls through," said Tony, suddenly moody —
a rare phase with him — "it might mean waiting for
years. Could you give me up, Hope?"

"Not as long as you want me." She too felt that
cloud of unanswered queries, things unspoken, between
them. "Must I, ever? I could go on working, you
know."

"Good Lord, I should hope not," he said, positively
startled by her point of view. What on earth would
the people he knew think of such a proceeding ?

She was wistful when he left: she felt as if she
were reaching out to him over some gulf ; they strained
to each other, and yet in spite of clasped hands and
meeting lips the gulf remained. He had not said that
nothing should keep them apart.

Mary, arriving late and weary, brought Hope a fare-

120 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

well note, and observed that she barely troubled to
read it through.

"Tired, dear?" she asked, reading her own sensa-
tions into the faint cloud on the girl's brow.

"Oh, no. No," said Hope absently. "I'll write
to-morrow." She was talking to herself. "Mary, is
he going to buy in the Kenatchee Company ?"

Mary would have answered the question to no one
else, but she knew Edgerton told Hope all the girl
cared to hear, perhaps as a relief after keeping his
own counsel with everybody else.

"I don't really know," she said. "He has an ace up
his sleeve. He's playing them; but I don't know
why. I asked him to-day, and he only laughed. He
knows what he's doing, I'm sure; but I don't. These
alleged business men here are babes in arms compared
to him. None of them ever really made any money,
as he has. They simply sat still till it grew up round
them. He has the gift. It is a gift — like a strawberry
mark!" She laughed. "Hope, I'm tired of this
town."

"But you told me " Hope began.

"I was raving," said Mary. "Or I lied. The fact
is, my child, I'm making too much money. I wax
fat and kick, like Jeshurun. To have money and no
place to spend it is almost as bad as having none and
every place to spend it. I am tired of this particular
treadmill. I'm tired of setting springes for wood-
cocks. Every time I write a new rhapsody to lure
some unsuspecting farmer into our toils I have to go
out and tell the absolute truth to some of my best
friends to square my conscience. As a result, Mrs.
Manners won't speak to me, and Cora Shane has been
telling everyone that Johnny Walters must have
thrown me over and soured my disposition. Dear
Johnny heard it himself, and came to me with tears

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 121

in his eyes to ask if it was true." She laughed again.
"And Fm afraid of going to Eleanor Travers's dance
for fear I may ask her about her brother. You know-
he has low tastes, wouldn't go to college, and drives a
truck for a living. He is the family skeleton; he
weighs two hundred pounds. I always liked him, but
half the town doesn't know there is such a person."

"I didn't know she was giving a dance," said Hope,
still absently. "I wonder if Kenatchee Falls wouldn't
be a good investment?"

To which Mary answered lucidly:

"Ah, I think I shall have to settle with Cora Shane."
She went to the telephone, called up Miss Travers and
asked herself to tea the next day.

Shortly after, Hope received a card to the dance.
She looked at it listlessly, as she had at Edgerton's
letter — which was yet unanswered — and said at last
that she did not want to go anywhere.

"But you ought to," said Mary.

She could not give a reason when Hope asked why.

Tony stayed away for two weeks.

CHAPTER XII

HE had not meant to. He did not want to. He
wanted to see her ; he craved the delight, the
full, tender tide of emotion — half-sensuous,
half-spiritual — that she stirred in him. But there was
the cloud between them; when he would go to her,
he seemed to be walking into it. He could not get
away from it, even in thought, without dismissing her
with it; unconsciously, he found himself wishing to
put her image from his mind. Then he sought for a
way through, and harked back to Jim Sanderson as
the only possible solution. Edgerton was a solution,
but not in that sense possible. Sanderson was away.

Other worries crowded on him ; his financial affairs
were by no means in order; there were numberless
petty irritations about money, the more exasperating
because release from them was in plain sight but re-
mained just out of reach. And yet in this case the
association of ideas which kept him away from Hope
failed to operate in wonted sequence. He should have
begun to dislike Edgerton, as being connected with
both his anxieties, but he did not. It would have been
counter to both his training and his instincts. Edger-
ton was still Success, and he still respected Success,
and liked those who had achieved it. So he honestly
liked Edgerton, none the less because his one or two
letters to him, touching the Kenatchee Falls business,
went unanswered.

But, since nothing lasts, gradually he began to lose
that sense of separation from Hope, the more because
a small sum of money came in opportunely and eased

122

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 123

the other pressure. And when at last he turned into
her front gate, he walked joyfully.

She came to his arms, like a nesting bird, too happy
to speak.

They never were fluent with each other since the
definite engagement. They had exhausted the gener-
alities available for first acquaintance. The signifi-
cance of the fact escaped them. It was not jealousy,
but the mere search for a topic led her to ask him if he
had been busy.

"Very busy," he said. "And then I thought Td
square a few other accounts and I paid all my old
calls. I thought I'd surely meet you, somewhere."
His own words flew back and stung him. Why did he
not meet her, somewhere?

"I've only been lazy," she said bravely. Though she
would cloister herself, wear the willow for him in
solitude, she would never, never have told him so,
nor even let him guess it. "Mary tried to drag me
to the Travers dance. I don't think I want people,
just now."

"Most of 'em are plain nuisances," he said, smiling,
"but I need some of them in my business. Got to be
nice to them."

"I don't see how you do it," she said, in honest
wonder. "Have you got any further with Ken-
atchee?"

His mention of business had suggested that, but
immediately she was sorry, because he had told her
that it meant their marriage. She had almost a horror
of seeming to wish that it might be hastened. She
wanted him not only to approve the plans, but to
originate them. She wanted to be the Princess of the
Glass Tower, and he should climb eagerly to the very
top for her.

124 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"No," he answered, with sudden gloom. "Can't do
anything till Edgerton comes back. I hope he hur-
ries."

"I don't think he will be, for several months," she
said, qualifying it only with, "I am not sure, though."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Why, no, not exactly. But he is going to New
York first, maybe to Europe."

"Did he write to you ?" was what he wanted to ask.
It was as if he could hardly see her now for the re-
turning cloud. But he said nothing. There was some-
thing at the back of all this. Why, if she were so close
to Edgerton, could she not help him, Tony ? It would
be only natural, unless — unless she could ask nothing
for a rival, and hope for success.

He was cold. His pride as a man and a lover was
stabbed; also, he suffered more simply. Then she
leaned to him hesitantly, and he kissed her, and found
it hurt ; something base had crept into his delight. He
did not believe her absolutely. Thereafter he went
looking for flaws, for discrepancies. Still making
conversation, he asked :

"Is Miss Edgerton coming back with him ?"

"Yes, I think so. Mary had a letter from her ; she
wants to come back. She's going to Europe too.'*

Was that it? His relief was immeasurable. Emily
had written.

But that answer was only a question too. He saw
that after he had left her.

To his own creeping shame, he found himself per-
petually setting traps for her. And he knew he was
waiting for Jim Sanderson to come back. He hated
it all so much that sometimes he hated himself. And
sometimes he almost hated Hope. He did not know
whether his shame was for doubting her or for ever
having believed her.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 125

It was not comfortable. And he hated discomfort
above everything.

Once in a while he forgot by drinking more than
enough. There were still moments when Hope her-
self could banish it from his mind. And increasingly
he found himself at ease with Cora Shane. The ab-
surd reason underlying that fact was that to Cora
Shane he had denied Hope. So with her the whole
entanglement did not exist. Hope did not exist. Mrs.
Shane, needing no more information than she got from
other sources, never spoke of her.

The long room, with the flowers on the grand piano
and Cora welcoming him from the depths of her
basket chair, was Tom Tiddler's Ground. It took
him out of himself. He was there very often.

So of course he saw Hope less. Yet he was more
loving than before when he did see her. He was
trying to shut out the cloud from between them. They
were both aware of it. Only Hope did not know
what it was.

She moped, and tried to hide it. Ned Angell be-
came a nuisance to her. He covertly accused her of
something near the truth. Her secret unhappiness
had for him a morbid fascination. He was senti-
mental, in a word. He wanted to sympathise. She
could have slain him for it cheerfully; figuratively,
she threw him out of the house of her soul, neck and
crop. And then he hovered. It was awful; only
Mary's pungent cynicism and sharp, unsparing laugh-
ter saved her from running amuck in some way.

Mary knew. But her every word and action in-
sisted that she did not know. Hope was grateful.

She hardly saw anyone but those two and occa-
sionally Allen Kirby. She would not go anywhere,
except for aimless, prowling walks in the dusk. A
weight of uncertainty clung to her. What was the

126 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

matter? She repeated the question to herself until it
became meaningless with iteration, like the mutterings
of a fever patient. And then one day something about
it made her laugh, some burlesque touch of Mary's,
so sly it could not be returned nor acknowledged.
That cleared her brain. There was nothing the mat-
ter, except that she was a fool, and probably Tony
was still worried over his business affairs.

Having settled on that explanation, she was peace-
ful again. But she was not again so happy ; she hoped,
where before she felt she had won to the end.

She should have been haughty, and exacting. So
she would have fared much better. Tony thought her
patient with him when her patience was for events;
in him she believed still, absolutely. He, taking the
world's valuation of the world, took love's outward
valuation of love. But Hope asked only the crumbs
from the table; she did not think anyone — except
Tony, perhaps — splendid enough to command the
whole feast. This is no more than a rather idealistic
folly, to make of it a feast rather than daily fare —
but how should she know ? Tony actually thought her
a little Griselda, a Laetitia Dale. Always, of course,
she would be there. So he need never hasten to her.
He needed a spur. What jealousy he had felt was a
thorn instead. Yet he loved her. We must all love
as best we can.

Mary knew at last that she had failed. There was
only luck to hope for now. Hope shrunk with obvious
distress from any questions. Quite shamelessly, Mary
broke her word and told Lisbeth.

"But why won't she announce it?" asked Mrs. Pat-
ten, with simple bewilderment.

"Because it's hers," said Mary thoughtfully.
"Primitive instinct. As far as decency goes, we know
she's perfectly right. But organised society doesn't

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 127

really care a fig for decency; it's bent only on self-
protection. Just reverse that, and you have Hope.
Now watch the irresistible force strike her, head on."

"It will," said Mrs. Patten with regretful conviction.
"Why, Tony himself is a cause of gossip now. Can't
you fancy him learning that? He'll be in a terrible
predicament — won't know whether to believe it or not !
I mean, to believe if there's any truth in it. Mary,
can't you ask her to do it for you ? She lives with you ;
you can't afford to have "

"Oh, bunk," said Mary inelegantly. "As long as my
uncle is Minister of Mines at Ottawa I can afford
seven scandals a week. If the Government doesn't
fall before the next Birthday he'll have a nice shiny
knighthood, and I can afford a dozen. I do like the
British system we've taken over with the Birthday
Honours of being inalienably respectable once estab-
lished, unless we get into the newspapers. Why, even
the fact that uncle can't get on with me for half an
hour doesn't make any difference. No, your sugges-
tion is really awfully good — only it won't work. If I
told her exactly what you've said, she'd feel worse
than if she were in the stocks before the whole town.
If I didn't, she would not understand, but would prob-
ably insist on leaving me in genuine sorrow at having
done whatever-it-might-be that injured me. Why,
she wouldn't even hate me! I can only think of
putting an announcement in the paper, and then vir-
tually daring Tony to deny it. It would be amusing —
but no, I don't dare."

"Then take her out more."

"Lisbeth, I haven't the heart for that either. Wait
till she's five years older, over with all this, and has
grown a skin. I did take her out last week, to the
Lockwoods'. Mrs. Lockwood was just plain catty cu-
rious to see the girl she'd heard so much about. But

128 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

I took her. It was funny. After the weather, some
one said something about books. Hope brightened,
her eye positively gleamed with intelligence. She
made a remark — I forget what — and Mrs. Lockwood
said that, for her part, she thought Marie Corelli
wrote beautifully. Hope sat with her mouth open for
a full minute; simply floored. She was squirming
inside, checkmated. You know, she really had ex-
pected conversation. Well, you've spoiled her. I sup-
pose Mr. Lockwood himself must have noticed her
hunted look. He brought her the last collection of
Christy stiffs to look over, a tribute to her artistic
endowments! Then she sat turning the leave.s in a
kind of trance for awhile, and the rest of us talked
scandal, over her head, until Dr. Wilton brought in
Viola Marsten's name. Hope said she thought Viola
exceedingly pretty. The sound of her voice created a
mild sensation, she'd been sitting so mumchance. And
Dr. Wilton — you know what a gossiping cad he is —
started to tell a story about Viola. Of course you've
heard it. I was afraid she'd get up and go out. She
told me afterward that she'd never dreamed a man
would tear a girl's name to pieces like that, for sheer
vicious pleasure. Well, of course a man wouldn't.
She was unhappy; she was lost. I took her away.
'She can't talk at all, can she?' Mrs. Lockwood said
afterward. *I should think Tony would be bored to
death.' Now, what could I do ?"

Mrs. Patten did not know. For herself she could
do nothing for Hope ; she was in mouming that year
for the death of her father.

They owned defeat by yielding to helpless belated
laughter at the scene Mary had recreated.

"Yes, let's talk about something else, and leave
Hope to the ultimate mercy of Heaven," said Mary
resignedly.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 129

"Well," sighed Mrs. Patten, "if I knew what to do
I'd do it. Ned keeps telling me about it, you
know "

"Oh, Ned " Mary bit the rest of the sentence

off and swallowed it.

"He never had a chance," said Mrs. Patten, almost
inaudibly, her eyes over-brilliant. "His father "

"Yes, yes, I know," said Mary hastily, softened.
"Those idiotic Roman fathers. They break their boys,
and then virtuously chuck them on the dust-heap —
out here. It's sweeping smoking flax into the fire-
place. What's a man to hold to here? Lisbeth, do
let's be cheerful, talk about a nice murder, or some-
thing."

So they went out in the kitchen to get tea, and later
Mary walked home, not so much for the exercise as
because there were no street-cars. Spring was late
and stormy; she got herself in a pleasant glow, tem-
pered with apprehensions of a frostbitten ear, strug-
gling against a snow-laden Norther that seemed utterly
unaware this was April.

"A perfectly irrational climate," she commented to
herself. "Perhaps it accounts for Hope." And she
jerked open the storm door, plunged into the house
headlong, and cannoned off Ned Angell, who was just
going out.

"Ned," she said acidly, "you have a positive genius
for being in the wrong place," and left him, before he
could find breath to answer, to put whatever construc-
tion he chose on the sentence.

Hope was at her drawing-board. It was quite evi-
dent she had been working without regard for Ned's
presence. She looked up with a half-frown, as if she
feared he might have come back.

"Oh, Mary," she said, in the level tone that denotes
a preoccupied mind, ''what was the fourth Moon Baby

130 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

doing in the story we did yesterday ? I forget, and I
can't find your copy. Lookyhere, woman, he goes up
in this corner; I've left room for him."

*'I forget, too," said Mary, "but here's the story."
She produced it from beneath the lamp. "Oh, the
darlings ! I love their ducktail curls and funny little
sad faces. Hope, why don't you use them some way ?
Make a nursery dado — say?"

"Well, dear," said Hope, "we haven't any nursery.
And would anyone in this town know what to do
with a dado?"

"No," agreed Mary, dropping the suggestion.
"They'd probably think it was something out of a
menagerie. Had company, didn't you?" There were
two empty tea-cups.

"Only Ned."

"Expecting anyone else to-night?"

Hope shook her head. Her eyes remained fixed on
her drawing.

CHAPTER XIII

THE storm raged itself out ; before the snow had
time to compose to the outline of the earth a
chinook shrieked down from over the heads of
the mountains, and the white coverlet shrank and dis-
solved as if a hot iron were being passed over it.
When the wind quieted after a day or two nothing of
the snow remained. Hope walked dry-shod over the
unpaved crossings in the part of the town where she
and Mary lived, directing her course toward a grateful
spot of green in the heart of the town, the gardens
surrounding the railway station. There were no flow-
ers yet, but the dwarf cedars were sharply fresh.
There was even a faint flush of green on the close
sward, for the grass grew like magic when a warm
spell encouraged it while any moisture remained.
Hope had a letter in her hand; she wanted to catch
the mail train from the South. She paced up and down
idly, through the small expectant crowd, consciously
enjoying the thin sunshine which the boarded plat-
form seemed to conserve. There was no one she knew
in sight. By and by the express swept in with a
clanging rush. She went forward toward the mail car.

A girl in a brown tailor-made, with a pheasant wing
on her smart hat, was first foot out of the Pullman to
the porter's stool. Behind her pressed a tall man in
grey — Edgerton. Emily, revealing herself by tossing
back a travelling veil, handed him her dressing-case.

"Hold it, daddy," she adjured him. "I have eleven-
ty-three telegrams to send; wait for me."
131

132 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

She went into the station, and he stood over their
luggage, looking for a porter. Emily had a passion
for telegraphing to her girl friends.

Through the confused crowd, Hope came by and
would have passed him unseeing. He called her name,
twice ; several people turned to stare before she would
notice.

But when she did, her welcome was heartening.

"Why didn't you say you were coming?" she re-
proached him. "I'm sure Mary didn't know.'*

"You mean," he said, for he was capable of mis-
chief, "Miss Dark is playing hooky from the office.
I came on purpose to catch her at it. Why didn't you
write, little girl ?"

"I — I meant to," she stammered.

He looked at her closely.

"You look tired," he said.

"It was a long winter." She sighed. "Did you have
a good time in New York ?"

"Great — I wish you'd been there. Emily spent two
hundred dollars a day."

She laughed; that was so like him.

"You've got some beautiful new clothes yourself,"
she said, becoming properly serious.

"The very latest thing," he told her. "This waist-
coat, now " But she had begun to laugh again.

"I brought you something," he said. "Am I to see
you, this trip?"

The naive bribe also amused her.

"Why not? Do you stay long? I thought Emily
was coming with you again."

"She's here," he said, and Hope, turning, was just
in time to see her coming through the big swing
doors. "How pretty — and well dressed," she thought.
Emily seemed to have grown, she had perceptibly
gained in finish. Tony Yorke was with her! Edger-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 133

ton was still explaining, "I don't know how long; I
have some business to wind up."

"At Kenatchee?" asked Hope half teasingly.

"You and Miss Dark," said Edgerton confidentially,
"for two clever women, are slow, darned slow. There
are several other people would like to know what
you'd like to know ; I want to see if you won't get next
before them. And here's one of the others," he nodded
toward Tony, hardly yet within ear-shot. He chuck-
led to himself. "Emmy," he said, "trust you to spear
a young man within five minutes after you get off the
train in a strange town. Hello, Yorke." They shook
hands; Tony's manner was easy and unconstrained.
Emily was a trifle rosy, and seemed to remember Hope
with difficulty.

"But of course, I do," she protested, "only your
name's so odd ; pretty, too, I think." Yes, Emily was
assimilating her world more and more. "Tell me, do
you still see Miss Dark? I liked her so much; and I
met some of her people lately. Tell her I am in town ;
perhaps she will be nice and come to see me. Daddy,
have you got a porter yet?"

He had; they strolled away together, Emily and
Tony walking on ahead, carrying on a gay but indis-
tinguishable conversation of their own. At the end
of the long platform Hope stopped.

"End of the line," she announced. "I have an ap-
pointment ; yes, with Mary. I shall warn her. Good-
bye, Miss Edgerton," she called.

Emily turned.

"Oh, wait," she cried. "I wanted to say — will you
not come with Miss Dark? Do, please."

Hope promised; and, as Edgerton was again asking
her if he might see her, she smiled at him, so the
assent covered both questions. But he detained her
yet a moment.

134 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"I say," he asked, for Emily and Tony were again
walking on, "what sort of chap is that Yorke? You
know him well, don't you ?"

Why did he ask?

"Yes, rather," she said. Once she had so answered
Tony's question about Edgerton. "He's very — agree-
able," she added calmly.

"Emmy seems to like him," Edgerton explained.
"Got his picture — oh, well, she has a regular gallery I"

Hope repeated her good-byes. She still felt singu-
larly calm, but dull — heavy. She forgot about Mary,
until she had walked nearly home. Then she ran
all the way downtown again, and forgot what it was
had caused her to forget.

But Tony, although he was having a very pleasant
moment with Emily Edgerton, did not forget that he
had heard Edgerton call Hope by her name, seen her
turn and hold out both her hands, there on the station
platform. He had been in the crowd there but a
moment before he had gone into the station and met
Emily. He thought Hope had come to meet Edgerton.
That he was there himself, innocently; that everyone
walked by the station every day, he forgot. That
was why he had turned away without speaking.

Of course Emily's presence put a slightly different
face on that. And since she had brought him into the
party, not unwillingly, he thought perhaps it was an
excellent opportunity to sound Edgerton. He walked
with them to the hotel, and Emily was kind. Tony
had had enough experience to know when a pretty
girl was delicately smoothing the way for an advance
for him; it did not require undue conceit on his part
to understand Emily's attitude. She was gracious, and
just flatteringly shy; she reverted to incidents of her
former visit as if she had forgotten no phase of it.
And he lost nothing of her added social stature ; even

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 135

her costume, a year ahead of the modes there, was
not wasted on him. She had grown into such a girl
as he had once led cotillions with at home. Such a
girl, he might have added, as he had once previsioned
as a wife. The second generation had come into its
own.

In the lobby she left the two men to go to her room,
and they gravitated insensibly towards the bar. Ed-
gerton was quite encouragingly cordial. He meant, in
fact, to have a little of his own kind of fun with Tony,
knowing quite well of what the young man was think-
ing. Within the week a meeting of the Kenatchee
Falls Company's directors was to be held, and Edger-
ton had fully made up his mind to come finally to terms
with them; his own terms, but not too ungenerous.
But he had not the least intention of giving any clue
of those terms to Tony, and was jocular when he
deliberately brought up the subject.

"Oh, well," said Tony, "of course, if you can't see
your way to going into it, we'll have to turn our guns
in another direction. I suppose you know Sir Wardell
Bromley looked it over a few weeks ago, but we held
him off to give you first call."

Edgerton chuckled; he did know. He knew quite
well, also, by cable from London, that Sir Wardell's
"pool," alarmed by a recent slump in Canadian securi-
ties brought about by a big bank failure, had definitely
withdrawn. The echoes of that bank crash were still
heard; capital had never been so shy.

"Oh, yes. Yes," he said. "Well, I've been waiting
on my engineer's report." He had had it six months
before. "Yorke, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
trying to sell me a gold brick like that." Tony's jaw
dropped; then he looked sincerely angry, and was
about to speak. "Oh, come on, can't you take a joke?"
Edgerton forestalled him good-naturedly. "Do you

136 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

want me to own up I simply can't raise the coin just
now? Hard times, hard times." He shook his head,
and Tony missed the twinkle in his eyes. "I guess
ril have to pass the buck to your Britisher. Too
bad. Say, come around and lunch some day this week.
Didn't I hear Emmy asking you? Glad to see you.
Guess I'll go up and put on a clean collar." He went.

Perhaps if he had known how much it meant to
Tony, everything, in short, he would not have ex-
tracted quite the same flavour of fun from his decep-
tion. But then, business was business ; he had to drive
a bargain, and he knew the psychological value of
suspense. What he wanted was simply a clear ma-
jority in the company, and he meant to have that or
nothing. He wanted to show the others very plainly
that "nothing" from him meant exactly nothing from
any source ; and he thought Tony would do it for him.
They would go to that meeting without hope, now,
and would snatch at whatever he offered.

Without hope was exactly Tony's own feeling. And
he had not the small consolation he had counted on
when he came West, of losing nothing; for to lose
even the hope of a very material good is to lose a
great deal. It was checkmate. Where could he turn ?
He pondered despondently over a lone glass of Scotch
and soda, turning with a sensation of distinct annoy-
ance when someone slapped him heartily on the
shoulder.

It was a day for meetings, evidently. The new-
comer was Jim Sanderson, exuding good-fellowship at
every pore, and loud in his rejoicings at being back,
after a long sojourn in the Northern wilderness inves-
tigating copper prospects.

"How's everyone?" he inquired genially. "Any-
one dead, married, eloped? Any new girls? Spin
it out."

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 137

Jim Sanderson, inter alia, was a male gossip; a
creature not so rare as may be innocently supposed.
He and Dr. Wilton were cronies; he had plenty of
men friends of a casual sort besides, but to one who
knew either of those two that simple fact sufficed to
express him. It was not difficult to get him to talk;
a harder proposition would have been to silence him.
Tony sometimes tried uneasily to clear himself of
having brought in Hope's name, there, in that glitter-
ing and profanely masculine room with the long ma-
hogany counter and huge mirror, when he thought of
the matter afterwards; but the best he could do for
himself was to be not quite sure. What Sanderson
said, in detail, were hardly worth setting down, but
the import was sufficiently black ; and he was extraor-
dinarily explicit with names, dates, and places. Poor
Evan Hardy, had he been there, would have acted the
man's part which Tony declined. By a miracle, there
was no one else in the bar at the moment, and they
lowered their voices, Jim with that air of forbidden
enjoyment always noticeable when such confidences
are being exchanged, whether over Pekoe or Scotch.
So he collected payment for that blow on the cheek.
But to do him justice, he would have told the tale
quite gladly with no such incentive.

After that, having washed his hands in such exceed-
ingly muddy water, Tony felt clean to go to Emily
Edgerton, who had promised to meet him in the tea-
room in an hour. He was unusually gay. "Eat, drink,
and be merry, for to-morrow " no, not to-mor-
row, to-day, everything had tumbled about his ears.
His hope of a fortune was gone, and Hope was faith-
less. Why, she had been faithless before he ever met
her! Deep down, some bewildered protest struggled
to be heard in him; it was not possible that any girl,
nay, not the most clever woman, could have seemed.

138 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

and only seemed, to be what she was. But he refused
to hear it. And this was most characteristic of him :
that he felt most like a gambler who has lost his last
stake, rather than a man deceived. Hope went with
the rest. It did not make matters pleasanter, but
then it was only a part of the whole.

Emily came down the stairs, hard on the heels of
that lingering thought of Hope; the sight of her
crowded the other from his mind. Heavens, the girl
was more than pretty; she was a beauty! Her white
serge gown — she had thought it worth while to
change, then — moulded itself to her long, vigorous
lines with classic effect, and her shoes, her gleaming
white silk hose, the lacy ruffles that cascaded from the
base of her firm throat, her large white hat, were again
of the top of the mode. He had never appreciated
her before. She was charming — and willing to be
charmed. Over the wicker tea-table in the farthest
comer of the lounge they progressed, in half an hour,
a very long way. When he left her, he was not sure
but there might yet be a turn of the wheel before the
ball fell.

But for Emily, he might not have had the courage
or desire to go to Hope as he did, early that evening.
He would have let her eat her heart out in slow sus-
pense, because he hated the unpleasantness inseparable
from what he meant to do. But she would see Emily
and her father probably soon, and while he never
expected her to tell anything to anyone, he desired
there should be nothing to tell. It might sometimes be
more amusing to be on with the new love before he was
off with the old, but it was not always safe, and his
margin was narrow already. So he went.

She saw his depression instantly. And he did not
offer to kiss her, but sat down, looked at the floor,
and seemed to wait for some second sight on her part

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 139

to read his purpose. But all she could do was to ask,
in a hurt, frightened, low voice:

"What is the matter, Tony?"

"Everything," he said, trying to hasten the end. "It's
all off. I — Hope, I've played out my string. I can't
hold you to marrying a man without a cent in the
world, and mighty uncertain prospects. I saw Edger-
ton; he's not going to take us up. So the best thing
for you is for me to clear out."

She sat frozen. If he had tried to hold her, even
shown her that the renunciation of her meant more
to him than the other loss ; if he had even asked her
to wait for him. There was a weight like lead in her
bosom, and beneath that tears, which would not come
because the weight withheld them. Was this the man
who would over-ride destiny for her? He was yield-
ing without a blow being struck.

"If I'm a burden to you," she said at last in a dull

voice, "of course I can't — can't " Indeed, she could

not do anything, not even finish whatever it was she
meant to say. "You know you're free," she articulated
finally. "You must do what you think best." Now
for the first time she longed achingly for him to offer
her one caress. Her stillness deceived him into think-
ing her simply indifferent. With that fine unreason
common to love, even love denied, he was wounded
by her attitude.

He had come to her honestly meaning to spare her
as much as possible ; he did not really like to see any-
one suffer. But neither did he like to do all the
suffering himself; and then, too, he wanted horribly
to justify himself.

"Oh, well," he said, "you never cared much. You
didn't even want to help."

"I couldn't," she said in bewildered protest.

He eyed her narrowly.

140 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Anyway, you'll forget me — as you did the others."

"The others?" She looked at him in utter per-
plexity. "What others?"

"Sanderson told me," he said, with rising heat.
"And you said you didn't know him. I believed you,
Hope!"

Slowly it reached her confused mind, which was
stupefied by the shock.

"I didn't want to know him," she answered, after a
pause, and got to her feet, her eyes hard and bright.
"He's a — an unspeakable cad. I can't bear to speak
of him. You — you talked me over with himf Ah!"
Her old disgust of the man choked her. She presented
her back to Tony, and walked to the window.

"No, I didn't," he denied untruthfully. "And
haven't I seen for myself — other things ?"

She made no answer. Hope was by no means of
an hysterical nature; but now she was fighting, to
the last of her strength, to keep from losing self-con-
trol while he was near. She had been under a long,
unacknowledged strain, and if she even tried to speak
she knew not what frantic foolishness she might com-
mit herself to. She wanted to fight for her happiness,
to plead for it even; but could not. She wondered
wildly what his last words meant, and to ask him was
out of her power. And again, she did not want to
know. Everything he had said had been so unbear-
able ; to hear any more was beyond her. The others !
Thus to cheapen her feeling for him, why, he was com-
mitting sacrilege. She had never thought so basely
of him.

Unconsciously she pulled a leaf from the geranium,
looking at it closely but without seeing it at all, still
waiting until she could find some words that might be
adequate, and not wild. She heard him cross the
room — to the door. And he supplied the needed word.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 141

"Good-bye — dear," he said, his voice singularly gen-
tle. At the end remorse had overtaken him. And
also, even at the very last, she remained a puzzle to
him. She had explained nothing.

"Good-bye," she said, without turning. She heard
the door close. She could not move, to go after him,
where her heart went, and recapture her happiness,
and her trust.

Mary found her, lying on the couch with the room
darkened and a towel bound about her forehead and
eyes, quite two hours later. She was sick with weep-
ing, her face swollen and marred with tears, but still.

"It's all over, Mary, and the dead are counted," she
said, sitting up as the light came on. *T-please don't
tell me how beautiful I look." There was a catch in
her voice, which was husky and toneless.

"You and Tony ?" said Mary, shocked beyond words
by the very thing she had always expected.

"Y-yes," said Hope. "I'll tell you — some time. Let's
talk about something else. Something funny."

And Mary did. But that night she heard Hope sob-
bing in her sleep.

CHAPTER XIV

MARY knew Edgerton had something on his
mind; he watched her furtively over his
shoulder, and handled the papers on his desk
in an aimless manner utterly foreign to him. But
when he finally unburdened himself, she was utterly
surprised.

"I don't know much about women," he began. "At
least," his brow contracted, "my wife says I don't.*^

There was a hidden meaning in that reference, for
Edgerton's heart was sore and his pride raw from his
wife's gentle ministrations. Her parting words to him
had been inexpressibly cruel. He had gone to her,
in great loneliness of soul, after his return from New
York, and begged for a complete reconciliation. Per-
haps he wanted to fortify himself against the imminent
meeting with Hope ; but chiefly, his divided home had
always been a secret grief to him, and this was not the
first effort he had made to close the breach.

It was her habit to put him in the wrong; to make
him lose his temper ineffectually ; always he found him-
self unable to say what he would ; but even a stupider
woman than she must have understood his blundering
advances, and realised what he was offering her. But
the plain truth was she did not want it because she
would not have known what to do with it. This time,
when he had pleaded for a little love, like a beggar for
a crust, she had told him — the remembrance of it
would smart for years — that no woman could love him,
except for his money. She had not spared to hint that
even Emily's affection was held at a price. He did
142

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 143

not realise it yet, but in fact she had at last broken
his bonds by overstraining them ; her hold on him was
gone. He would never again ask her for anything.
More, he would never again desire aught from her.

"Oh, well, who does know anything about women?"
said Mary cheerfully. "They're exactly like men — all
different."

"Are they?" He did not seem certain in his mind.
"It's my girl I'm thinking of. You know, I want her
to be happy. I want her to have everything she wants,
if it's good for her."

"What does she want?" said Mary briskly, but
touched by his turning to her in his perplexity.

"She's got a fancy for that young man — Yorke,"
said Edgerton.

Mary positively gaped at him.

"Do you mean that he has proposed to her ?"

"Well, in a way. Emmy and I have always been
chums, you know. She just hinted that he had hinted
that she was the only girl in the world — oh, she just
had to tell someone, you see, and I was the only one
handy." He dissembled his pride that she had brought
her unfolding little heart to him, her father. "She
always does tell me, when any young sprig begins
making up. She's had a dozen. But she says she
likes this one."

"But what do you want me to do?" asked Mary,
absently tearing up an advertising layout she had
been working at all the morning.

"Tell me if he's good enough," said Edgerton. "You
know him, and I'd back your judgment. I don't know
anything about him, and I haven't time to find out, if I
want to act."

"He's not good enough," said Mary viciously.

Edgerton looked up sharply.

"Why not?"

144 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

^'Because," she spoke carefully, her dark eyes nar-
rowing like a cat's, "he jilted another girl within the
week. And he hasn't a cent in the world. Neither had
she. Put two and two together." Then she feared
she might have struck him, instead of Tony, through
his pride in his daughter. "But certainly," she said,
"he is attracted by Emily — who wouldn't be? But I
do know him, and he's not good enough, not for your
daughter, anyway. Why," she added, with some sin-
cerity, "Emily can pick and choose; she can have the
best. She'd be throwing herself away. He's a lame
duck," she finished Tony off with one of Edgerton's
own phrases.

"All right," said Edgerton. "Thank you, awfully,
Mary — I beg your pardon, I mean Miss Dark. I've
heard you called by your first name so often. I won-
der if you couldn't see Emily, and maybe show her the
same thing? She thinks you're so clever, you know;
and it takes a girl to talk to another girl."

"I'll try," said Mary rather doubtfully.

She telephoned to Emily for an appointment, and
Emily insisted on lunching her, so it promised well.
Edgerton fell to pondering again, and as the result of
an hour's cogitation, scribbled a note, handed it to
Mary hastily, and reached for his hat. At the door he
turned.

"Who was the other girl ?" he asked.

"Oh, now ! That wouldn't be fair," said Mary. He
nodded assent, and went out. The note was for Hope.

If Mary had thought twice, she might not have
given Hope her news with the note. But she thought
a desperate case required desperate remedies, and the
girl was sick of a spiritual fever, sunk in a dreadful
lassitude. Her eyes were ringed with black, her face
looked pinched and ghostly, and she walked unseeing,
like a somnambulist.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 145

She twisted the note around her fingers while she
listened, and seemed at first to make no sense of what
Mary said. Then her head went up stiffly, with a ges-
ture of a sort of direful pride.

"Are they engaged, then ?" she only asked, at last.

*'No," said Mary, telling nothing of her own part
in the matter. "Her father will not have it; and I
know he will prevent it. I am certain of that."

Hope stood up, her hand pressed to her side.

"Mary," she said piteously, "was he like that all the
time — all the time? Was I really such a fool? Why
didn't I see it?'*

Mary knew she must be calm.

"Schopenhauer explains that much better than I can,"
she said lightly. "And' we're all fools, all the time.
Poor Tony is what he is; he can't help it. Circum-
stances cornered him, that's all. But he has all the
qualities that attract; I believe I could love him my-
self, with my eyes wide open, if everything conspired
against me. If you were ten years older, you'd have
managed circumstances, and been happy. Tony needs
a woman of the world, not a gosling like you."

"What should I have done?" she asked again.
"What did I do? He didn't believe Jim Sanderson;
he only wanted an excuse."

"Well, child, don't we always believe our own
excuses?" said Mary sensibly. And, thinking that
later the lesson might be of use, she added, "Besides,
you have behaved outrageously; you certainly have."
Hope listened, with close and rather painful attention,
while Mary explained very succinctly and as impar-
tially as a mirror just what she had done and left un-
done. Mary could see the girl did not quite under-
stand— but in time she would. She ended, "But that
won't matter, if you really want him. Of course he's

146 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

not worth breaking your heart over, but you can have
him yet if you like."

"But I don't! I don't! I want what I thought he
was. It's just because he isn't worth — Mary, I hate
this place; it chokes me. I hate everybody in it. I
suppose I was — an — an idiot — but I never hurt any-
one. Why ? I want to get away from here."

It did choke her. There flooded over her like a wave
the feeling she had known the night she met Tony
at the dance supper. It was all muddy, evil, hateful;
and she felt herself sunk in it unaware, until she could
scarcely breathe.

Then she found Edgerton's note in her hand, and
began to laugh.

"Was Tony thinking of hihi?" she asked thought-
fully.

"Oh, probably," said Mary. "Don't bother about
it any more now. Will you come and see Emily to-
morrow with me?"

"Oh, yes," said Hope. "I'll play the game now.
That's what I should have done before, isn't it?"

Then her self-control gave way, and she wept again.
And then she laughed, and wrote an answer to Edger-
ton. Mary went to bed exhausted from sheer sympa-
thy, but Hope sat up half the night reading. Once
Mrs. Hamilton tapped at the door to inquire unob-
trusively if the light meant someone ill, and Mary
heard Hope joking with her for a moment. When
she woke again it was day, and Hope lay beside her
in a sleep as deep as death, white and quiet.

Edgerton only came to the comer with the motor,
but Hope heard the muffled down engine as he stopped,
and ran to meet him with a sensation of escape. Mary
was away for the evening, but Mrs. Hamilton, accord-
ing to custom, was at home. Little Bobby galloped
after her unsteadily; she turned on him with mock

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 147

ferocity, and he fled, shrieking with delicious fright.
Then she shut the door on him and came up to Edger-
ton, out of breath. There was something of that air
of breathlessness, of going too quickly to think, about
her all the evening. They went straight away from the
town, very fast at first; and in the close air of a still
and clouded night they seemed to skim the earth, to
lose identity with reality. It was thickly dark. When
Edgerton slowed down, miles away, they seemed adrift
in space, detached from the living world.

"Why are you driving?" asked Hope. "Where is
Allen? I tried to find him on the telephone to-day."

"Did you ?" said Edgerton, in a tone of dry humour.
"I thought so. That's why I sent him away. You'll
never see him again, little girl. Unless you order me
to bring him back for you. Can't I fill his place ?"

"Oh, just as well," she said lightly. "You did know
we used to steal your old car, then ?"

"I did," said Edgerton. "And it's a brand new car."

"Were you jealous of him?" She asked it idly.

"Horribly," said Edgerton.

Astounded, she detected the note of truth in his
voice. He had been jealous, too! And he had done
what one should do : he had calmly removed the cause.
She admired him, in a queerly impersonal way. He
commanded circumstances. Once she had thought
Tony capable of that!

"Oh, never mind," she said. "I just wanted some-
one to worry. Con, I must do something. I'm going
away. This town is full of emptiness."

"I'm going away, too," he remarked. "Want to come
along ?"

Now he was patently jesting, and she sent his head
spinning with her answer:

"Yes. Please take me."

148 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"My God," he said, forgetting the wheel a moment.
"Don't say things Hke that, dear."

"Oh, well," she sighed, "of course you don't need
me. You have everything, or can get it."

"You mean I'm rich," he returned. He felt the
necessity of seeing himself truly for once, and to do
that he must see through the eyes of another. The
barrenness of inanimate possessions was plain to him ;
his wife's taunt had stripped him bare in his own
sight, and when he had sent Allen Kirby away he had
known that as one man to another he feared the con-
test. "When I die," he said grimly, "I'd like to have
all my money brought to me, in paper, piled up — and
I'll set a match to it. Half my life's gone into the
making of it. I don't see why anyone else should have
it."

His secret bitterness welled up; he spoke as an in-
jured man, cheated, defrauded, by a world that set up
such false values before ignorant youth. The ring
of his tone was unmistakable. Hope leaned forward
and peered at him through the dark.

"Then," she said slowly, "after all, you're really no
cleverer than I. You didn't get anything out of it all,
either. And I was envying you !"

Well, it was true. He had sold twenty years of his
life for money, and now it came to him with a veritable
shock of horror that he could not repurchase those
busy, empty years for ten thousand times the sum he
had sold them for. Probably never again would he
have this vision, reach the bottom of the cup he had
filled for himself.

"No," he said, "I didn't What are you talking

about? You've got it all yet."

"Mine," she said, "was another kind of soap-bub-
ble."

"You mean " His mind was not quick, but it

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 149

had a sure reach. Slowly, now, he pieced together
many little things. "Were you the girl? The girl
Tony Yorke threw over?" He had not meant to put
it quite so brutally.

She grew hot, and visibly shrank into her cocoon-
like wrappings, but the necessity for honesty overcame
her also.

"How did you guess? Yes, it was me."

Edgerton muttered something indistinguishable and
angry.

"Why?" he asked heavily.

"Oh, why not?" she retorted, and tried to turn it
into a sorry joke. "Weren't you frightened yourself
a minute ago?"

"I ?" He reached round and drew her chin up clum-
sily. Her cheek was wet to touch. "You didn't mean

it It wouldn't be fair — and it isn't fair of you.

Would you?"

"Oh, yes, I would," she said calmly, but remem-
brance sent her mind off at a tangent. "No, there's
your wife ; of course, it would be a rotten thing to do."

"My wife!" He laughed. "You needn't worry
about her; she never wants to see me again, and I

mean to oblige her. If that's all Oh, don't say

any more. I give in; you know you can twist me
around your finger; but don't; not to-night. I'd go
through hell for you. You didn't mean it, did you?"

"I did," she reiterated wildly, for they were both
bewildered and lost in the Land of Last Things, and
could not stop telling the truth. She tried to qualify
and explain, but his mood had caught fire now.

"All right," he said. "Come. I'm going to-morrow
afternoon. Emily's leaving for the East just before;
going to visit Mary's aunt in Ottawa. I go West. I'll
wait for you at Laggan ; you take the next train. We'll
go anywhere you say. If my wife gets a divorce — I

ISO THE MAGPIE'S NEST

think she will — I'll marry you as soon as you like ; or
I'll let you go when you're tired. I'll buy the world
for you, and you can kick it around. Is that all right?"

Now she was adrift in space, indeed, and filled with
the dazed contentment of one who has finally made a
choice. She tried to say something, and then noticed
they were slowing to a halt.

"What is it?" was all she found.

"The head-light's gone out." he said. "Wait till I
light it." He left her side and stepped down, fumbling
for a match. The glare of it lighted his ruddy smooth
face for a moment. There was something kind and
strong about him. She felt secure. He threw away
the match. "Oil's out," he explained, as if he had few
words now for material things, and went to the tool-
box. She still sat tranced, but for a moment only.

"Oh, look!" she cried urgently. A little tongue of
flame darted out from the road-side, flickered and
raced in the old grass, spreading like oil on placid
water. Edgerton stood staring. "Idiot!" shrieked
Hope, springing over the back of the seat into the ton-
neau and seizing an armful of rugs. "Beat it out!"

The rugs alighted neatly over Edgerton's head;
Hope went after them, and salvaged one without cere-
mony. Edgerton collected himself and another rug.
The flames ran and fluttered in a little wind; they
fought them in an obscure, hot glare, working breath-
lessly and wordlessly. For an awful five minutes they
feared to see the whole country-side aflame. At the
end of half an hour they leaned wearily against the
rotund tire of the front wheel and took breath. The
fire was out, and they felt they could have done no
more.

"Light another match," said Hope. "I want to see
if I have any hair left. My gloves saved my hands."
The match spurted up; they looked into each other's

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 151

smeared and blackened faces, and simultaneously
showed two rows of startlingly white teeth in uncon-
trollable mirth. "You won't want to run away with
me now," Hope gasped. "Do you always celebrate an
elopement by setting the prairie afire ? Oh, oh !" She
clutched his arm weakly.

"Well, we started something, didn't we?" he said.
"Come; I've got some things to attend to in town."
He swung her up again, and kissed her cheek, but
seemed fearful of encroaching further on her favour.
He would take her gifts, but they must be given freely.

"I say, how did you get out of the tonneau? The
door is shut."

"Guess," she said. "Now, show me how fast you

can drive No, let me!" She hardly stopped

laughing all the way back, and risked his neck a dozen
times.

In his own rooms Edgerton did not wait to remove
the soot and grime from his face, but went straight to
the telephone. Long distance answered sleepily, but
acted with despatch. If she had listened later, she
might have been interested. And she might not if
business bored her. It was her business to call Ed-
monton, and she did.

"Hello ! hello ! That you, Comerf ord ? This is Ed-
gerton. Edgerton. . . . No, I've changed my mind;
don't want the charter renewed. I want it killed. I
know it lapses to-morrow ; I want it killed. I like my
charters brand new ... I want a new one. . . . Yes,
I know it'll cost a little more than to extend the old
one ; never mind. . . . Shane's crowd had their chance.
There'll be more room for you now. Get action with
the bunch to-night; call me up in the morning. I'll
leave full instructions here with Tennant; he's honest
if he is a lawyer. Lawyer honest, sure. You under-
stand?"

152 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Evidently Comerford understood presently, and Ed-
gerton rang off and called his lawyer.

". . . I'm leaving to-morrow. . . . Organise a new
company on that Kenatchee Falls deal . . . say, come
and see me to-morrow morning at eight. I'll explain
in detail. . . . Hell, no ; don't get Shane ; his crowd is
out of it . . . business is business." He was not con-
scious of any irony. "To-morrow at eight. Good
night."

So Tony's house of cards came down, blown upon
by his own breath. And the irony of it was that he
would never know the truth of how it happened.

CHAPTER XV

THERE was a foreign atmosphere about the fa-
miliar rooms ; Mary put her hand to her fore-
head with a gesture of fatigue, and looked
about her, almost petulantly, endeavouring to name the
impression she had received. **It looks empty ; yes, de-
serted," she thought. "Poor Hope seems able to have
made a wilderness merely by thinking one. But I
don't believe she calls it peace!" Mary would jest to
her grave. But the rooms did look forlorn. There
were things missing. She went into the bedroom and
snapped on the light. Hope's brushes and mirror were
gone ! And in the sitting-room the drawing-board had
been cleared; that was what she had felt. Mary
turned about slowly, as if orienting herself, and went
straight to the wardrobe. A battered leather suit-case
should have been there. It also was gone !

Mary went back to the sitting-room and dropped
limply into a chair, with a mental jerk at her clogged
and distrait mind. She had been very busy all day;
she had congratulated herself on being rid of a great
deal of pressing business, and had come home to rest,
to relapse temporarily into nothingness. Edgerton had
taken himself off to the West; that was one relief.
He had left death and destruction behind him, in a
sense; Mary had seen him calmly tear down all the
hopes of the men who had built on the Kenatchee Falls
transaction, and had gathered from his manner that he
felt a certain satisfaction in it. His demeanour had
not invited comment, but they had just once exchanged
a glance that said enough. And Mary had shrugged
153

154 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

her shoulders, and gone to work on the new company
organisation.

Emily also had gone, eastward. Mary made a wry
face at the recollection of that luncheon party, de-
ferred a day, whete Hope had actually appeared, with
a spot of colour on each cheek and a devil in her eye.
She had not spoken much, but there was something
oddly different about her; she was abnormally self-
possessed, ate nothing, and watched Emily with a look
of impish humour. She was witty, too, with a kind
of mad and topsy-turvy gaiety. She had left early.
And then Mary, in the half-hour remaining, had done
what she had to do. When she ended, there was no
more Tony. They left the debris of him on the lunch-
eon table, with the cold coffee cups.

It was cleverly done; neither Emily nor Tony ever
knew what had really happened. His epitaph wrote
him a small-town Lothario ; the flowers Emily handed
to the Pullman porter when her train drew out. And
Mrs. Shane had sent her some of them! The rest
Mary brought, a conscious tribute to her own work.
Part of them were devoted mentally to the other hap-
less victims of her prowess, for Tony went down
unhonourably in the wreck of a dozen local characters.
She was far from wishing to fix him in Emily's mind
by singling him out or bidding for a confidence. It
was well done indeed.

And she deserved a breathing space, and now Hope,

for whose sake she had laboured Where was

Hope? When she found her she would — she would
beat her! Ruefully Mary admitted it would do her-
self good, whether it helped Hope or not.

Panic fell on her suddenly, like the unexpected con-
tact of icy water ; her lethargy departed.

So Mrs. Hamilton found her, gazing about the room
with a look of bewilderment and alarm, as if she

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 155

thought to discover someone concealed under the sofa.

"I've been looking for you, Mary," said Mrs. Ham-
ilton, who was always calm, as a mother of four must
be if she would escape shrewishness. "My, you look
done up; you've been working late again."

"No, I've been dining with Mrs. Shane," said Mary.
"Worse. Where is Hope?"

"She went out, with a suit-case, at seven o'clock.
Just in time for the West train. Mary, I don't think
that child looks well lately, and she ought not to be
running around so. No sleep this week ; out with that
Kirby boy last night, and sitting up half the night be-
fore with a book. Don't say I said so ; I know you girls
can manage your own affairs. But I didn't like to see
her going off that way without any dinner. I was
bringing her some, but she'd gone. You get her to rest
up." Probably she said more, but Mary did not hear.

Once Mary opened her mouth to say: "But Allen
Kirby left days ago."

"I will beat her," she remarked instead. "She should
have waited for me. That train's a local ; it only goes
to Banff. Mrs. Hamilton, be a darling, and help me
pack. I've got to catch the Limited."

No doubt, Mary reflected afterwards, she made other
explanation, but she could not remember what. Mrs.
Hamilton never asked questions. She did not even
look a question, but, thanks to her, Mary found her-
self aboard the Limited with the half of a split second
to spare.

She had three hours to reassure herself that there
had been no other train than the Banff local for Hope to
take. As a side issue, she could reflect on the fact that
Edgerton might be in Banff, rather than Laggan, where
he had said he was going. And all the world goes to
Banff. It is to Canada — to America almost — what
Port Said is to the East. Wait there long enough and

IS6 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

tout le monde comes to you. So all the world might
already be apprised of what Mary hoped to avert. Of
course none would guess except her own little world
— but there it was. Everyone from their own town
spent week-ends at Banff. Though eighty miles dis-
tant, it amounted to a suburb. It was their one play-
ground.

Edgerton was in Laggan, however. There was
nothing for Hope to do but wait for the Limited, anath-
ematising her own stupidity. She was eager to go
on. Simply, she had to do something, the nearest thing,
anything, but immediately. If she stopped she would
want to die; that is, if she stopped to consider doing
nothing at all. The three hours did not go so slowly.
All the time her mind projected itself ahead, fixed itr
self still on doing something. The small, brightly
lighted, lonely station, the smell of the pines, the feel-
ing of the great calm mountains shrouding themselves
in the neighbouring dark, became afterward a compo-
nent part of her wild thoughts. Around the shoulder
of the foot-hill was a little town, and great hive-like
hotels, but she could not realise them. They meant
people, and certainly she could not realise people just
then, only Edgerton and herself. Fellow-travellers
passed her, waiting in the station, or pacing the plat-
form like herself. Some of them recognised her. She
did not recognise them. They were isolated from her
in that strange air of impermanence with which her
mood invested time and place. When the Limited
drew in, with a great discord of bells and whistles, and
the platform filled with yet more and more people,
coming or going, these were still unreal. Then Mary
came towards her out of the crowd, vividly alive among
all these ghosts, and she saw and seized on Hope with
a sort of angry affection and a great relief.

"Where have you been?" she demanded absurdly.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 157

"You — ^you Oh, I was distracted ! ButTve found

you."

"Fm going away," said Hope determinedly, brac-
ing her shoulders with an air of one refusing discus-
sion.

"You're going back on the next train," announced
Mary. 'I'll see to that."

"Oh, Mary, please don't bother me," said Hope,
with an unexpected pleading note. "I'll go mad if
ever I have to see that town again. I want to go."

"Now, see here," began Mary, vehemence overcom-
ing clarity of speech, as she dragged Hope off toward
a wooden bench out of the swirl of traffic. People
were elbowing them politely; a few stared for a mo-
ment in passing.

"But I must catch the train."

"Wait, wait a minute!" She sought for a tactful
beginning, and then flung herself at the heart of the
matter ; there was no time for tact. "You're going on
to meet Edgerton, aren't you?" Hope merely looked
at her, like an obstinate child which will not say it is
sorry. "Well, what has he ever done to you?"

"I like him," said Hope, which again was not what
Mary expected.

"Very well, you like him! And you're going to
make him miserable the rest of his life to prove it!"
Trusting to blind feeling, Mary knew it was useless to
ask Hope to consider prudence and her own side of
the case. "What'll he do with you? What will you
do with him ? You've got what he wants, but you can't
give it to him. He'd give you what you want, but he
hasn't got it. His life is made for him; he has made
it himself ; you'll be taking him away from everything
he's used to. He isn't your age ; he'll get tired of ever-
lastingly 'yearning beyond the skyline, where the
strange ships go down.' He'll want his work, and the

158 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

men he knows. He hasn't your tastes ; he'll be bored.
After awhile he'll see you growing up, and away from
him. And you'll be no nearer anything else. You'll
always be on the outer edge of things, outside of the
game ; you won't have conformed to the rules. And by
and by you'll leave him, find yourself — and he'll be
sorry all his life." She paused for breath.

Hope stared at her searchingly, with a little strange
laugh.

"Well," she said. "Really! Oughtn't he to know
what he's doing ? Why — why — what about me ?"

"Settle that with yourself," said Mary gravely.
"You'll have to anyway. But don't take out your
unhappiness — your spite — on someone who never hurt
you. What about me? Haven't I been fond of you?
Why do you want to leave me to face what you've
done? Do you think your friends will be spared?"

"My gracious," said Hope inadequately, "whose
business is it but mine ? Leave me alone, please, please.
No one cares."

"That's what you thought about you and Tony," said
Mary inexorably. "Nobody plays a lone hand."

"Oh," said Hope disdainfully, "you mean that some-
one is always looking over your shoulder and telling
you how to play. But you pay your own losses. Oh,
Mary, I want to go ! And who on earth would know ?"

"Everyone," insisted Mary. "His wife might learn,
and spread it all over the country in the newspapers.
Or she might exact half his fortune to keep silent.
You'd be the flaw in his armour; you might cost him
all he has spent his life building up. Then, if you did
marry "

"I don't want to marry him, or anyone," said Hope,
goaded into utter frankness.

"Well," said Mary, "then you'll take a great deal

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 159

and give nothing. After all, a man's got his name, too.
Hope, what if your own people should hear?"

"Would you tell them?" asked Hope stormily.
"Well, I'll go back. Please be quiet, Mary." She
dropped to the bench, and leaned her head against the
station wall, closing her eyes. The purpose went out
of her face ; she looked spent again. "I can't do any-
thing," she muttered. "But I must, I must."

The thought that obsessed her was that if she failed
to do something, and that quickly, some spring of life
in her would fail. A creeping drowsiness threatened
her, which it would pain her to fight off, as one feels
when the air supply is short. Some necessary element
had been taken from her in her great disillusionment.
She knew she needed action in the same way that one
nearly drowned must be tided through by forced
breathing and involuntary motion.

"Come to the hotel and rest till the next train," said
Mary gently. "And get something to eat."

"No. I must explain to him. I will go back if you
will go on up and tell him why I didn't come. He's
looking for me on this train. Here's my ticket;
you use it," said Hope practically. "And give him
this." She went into the telegraph room, wrote and
sealed a message. "Hurry, the train is starting; I
won't go unless you do."

Mary began to protest, thought better of it, kissed
Hope and ran. Perhaps Hope needed to be alone.
And, in spite of all her arguments, Mary was sorry for
Edgerton. Hope went back to her bench, sat down
listlessly, and felt herself going, very far away, to the
poppy fields of her childhood — but now the poppies
were black. She did not want to live. Her idol was
very completely broken, and its pitiful clay feet for-
bade her weeping over the wreckage. Her tears, she
reflected sardonically, would reduce it to the utmost of

i6o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

absurdity. So she sat, gazing into the dark. And when
Ned Angell stopped before her, he had to speak twice
before she seemed to hear.

"What?" she said at last, impolitely, and turned a
blank stare on him. "Good evening, Ned." If she had
shouted, "Go away," it could have been no plainer.
"What are you doing here?"

"I've been up for the week-end," he said. "Hope,
you look like a ghost. You're ill; for Heaven's sake,
let me get you something. I have some brandy in my
suit-case. What are you doing here ?"

"Eloping," she retorted. It was the nearest she
could come to shrieking, or hurling a brick at him. It
served. He was unintelligible for several minutes, and
she watched him stonily. She had come to a point
where her own despair was no longer tragic to her,
and in that was tragedy beyond words. In her mind
cause and effect were ranged side by side in grotesque
disproportion, grinning at her. She was as one mor-
tally wounded by a stiletto thrust, who looks at the
tiny wound with horrified unbelief, knowing that in-
significant aperture for a gateway to eternity. She
forgot Edgerton for the moment; Mary had rudely
torn him out of the foreground of possibilities, thrust
her back upon her own ridiculous catastrophe. And
Ned was the last straw. He was offering her brandy !
That reminded her, Edgerton had offered her the
world. Probably Mary had it now; he might have
been glad to be rid of it. "No, I really don't want
any brandy," she said almost patiently, having pro-
duced her effect. "Yes, I was eloping, but I'm not. I
changed my mind. Mary changed my mind. She's
gone on."

"Who?"

"Mary Dark — oh, the man? I shan't tell you.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST i6i

Neddy. If any of your friends happen along, they'll
think it's you."

"I wish it was," he said, and the bare simplicity of
his speech struck some chord in her that resolved her
again into a merely pitiful girl, aware of another's
hurt, and sorry for it.

"Why, Ned, not you ; it isn't possible."

"But it is — Hope, I can't talk to you here." Again
Hope was aware of people regarding them with vague
curiosity; they were at the further end of the plat-
form, a little isolated, but scarcely invisible; they re-
garded each other dramatically, uncertainly, with tense
white faces and the hint of outflung hands, their eyes
challenging and defensive ; it was not strange if people
stared. Ned knew it also, but he could not stop; he
could only urge her : "You're tired ; you are ill. The
train won't be in for another hour or more; it's late.
Have you had any supper? Come up to the hotel and
rest a little,"

Anywhere, she thought, to be rid of his immediate
importunities. But the problem he presented she was
grappling with ineffectually. It seemed she must be
hopelessly imbecile. People were always surprising
her now, turning to her unexpected surfaces, present-
ing her with new and incredible problems. Nothing
was simple any more; it was all beyond her, amazing
past conception. Everything that had seemed so plain
and straightforward, all her everyday relations, took
on a complexity that appalled her. Ned was not a
harlequin, an incident ; he was alive too ; if one pricked
him he bled. That much he was showing her, with
all the fervour of a vain and mercurial nature, as they
walked slowly in the green-dark obscurity of a by-
path beside the road to the hotel.

"You must have guessed it," he insisted.

"No, I didn't," she sighed. "Why should I? I

i62 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

don't think you ever said anything, did you?'* She
groped in her memory. Perhaps he had spoken; she
so seldom Hstened to him closely. Mostly she had
laughed at him, or put him aside as one does a trouble-
some child.

"Why do you suppose I was always coming?"

He was almost angry; in the heat of his new pas-
sion it seemed to him that he had always cared so
much. Now that she had so nearly gone from him for-
ever, she was all that was desirable and dear. He had
for long past known her heart was turned from him
towards another man; he had guessed it to be Tony
Yorke. Certainty had been impossible; she had her
dignity, and had placed him unmistakably, sometimes
pointedly, outside her confidence. And slowly her
inacessibility had wrought on him. To-night, with the
fine unreason of a new lover, he saw the whole world
of men striving to tear her from him. That was the
result of her challenge.

They were both rather mad, and it was night, and
spring.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "After all, you were
always about some other girl, too. You were always
at Mrs. Patten's, for the matter of that." Her hand
was on his arm, and she felt him start. "You don't
really care so much, do you, Ned ? Not now, anyway,
when I tell you Tony jilted me, and I came so near to
running away with — another man ?"

"Oh, Hope, I do, I do! There's only you. I don't

care about whoever else it was Do you care so

much for Yorke?"

"No," she said slowly, "I don't care for anyone.
It's all gone. But I'm tired." Presently she was weep-
ing on his shoulder. "So tired. I haven't anything to
give you."

He told her fervently that nothing was enough, if

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 163

he might only hope. In some sense his chivalry was
touched. It is hardly a quality to build on, in a senti-
mentalist, but in the clash and chaos of old illusions
fallen about her ears it seemed as solid as anything.
But he only won when he put forward his own need
as a plea. He wanted her! He did want her; he
ached for her; she felt it dimly — she had got into his
blood.

To her, who had wanted so much and whose hands
were so empty, it seemed unbearable that such a plea
should go unanswered. Two people wretched were too
many.

She wished only to see someone else happy, to re-
mind herself that there was such a thing as joy in the
world. Out of her enormous inexperience she was
assured that her life was lived. And here was a way
to end it neatly. Again her early training asserted it-
self, disastrous as any good rule is applied at the wrong
moment. He was urging her to marry him. Marriage
meant the end of the old order, a beginning of new
things. It was a solution to hand; and it answered
Mary's requirements; it would be according to the
rules of the game. And it would make Ned happy!
In fact, it was a sacrifice on the altar of happiness ; it
was neither for herself nor for Ned, but for the sake
of happiness itself. She hovered fearfully on the
brink, delayed putting her hand to the bond with idle
questions that in themselves committed her.

They had seated themselves on a fallen log, just be-
yond the path, to avoid belated strollers. A long,
harsh whistle pierced the night; Hope sprang to her
feet.

"The East train!" she cried. "We forgot it; it's
gone."

"Then marry me to-night," Ned said.

i64 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Now she looked over the edge of the unknown and
drew back a step.

"No. Why, two hours ago To-morrow you

will think differently. Tell me to-morrow, if you do.
I must go to the hotel and get a room. I tell you, I
know we're insane."

"To-morrow I shall think the same," he said, and
urged her again with wilder protestations, with the
sheer strength of his own feelings.

He was intoxicated, beyond mere earthiness. He,
too, had found romance. If Hope had been better able
to draw an analogy, she would have made the woods
echo with satiric mirth.

CHAPTER XVI

IF Mary had expected repose of mind after her
embassy extraordinary to Edgerton, she was dis-
appointed. She wanted Hope in plain sight, as a
guarantee against any further outbreak of insanity, as
she mildly termed it; and she did not even know
where Hope was. She had nearly a week in which to
exhaust her vocabulary of friendly abuse on nothing
more tangible than a vague note from Hope posted at
Banff and saying she needed a few days' rest and for
Mary to notify the school of her intended absence.

During the week, between her anxious hours, the
memory of that interview recurred to her. Edgerton
had taken it as she might have known he would, had
she paused beforehand to conjecture. His first look of
alarm at sight of her, visible to her searching eye, de-
spite his forced immobility of countenance; the ex-
pectancy that looked beyond her — for what, she did not
have to guess — and the way he had squared his shoul-
ders and hardened his face to the blow when she
blurted out her errand; all this she could have fore-
seen. She might also have expected anger at her
meddling, a disposition to brush her aside and take
what had been in his grasp, or more weakly to plead
his cause. He had done neither.

"Was she afraid of me, after all ?" he asked finally,
with a touch of mingled shame and shyness.

"No," said Mary. "She wanted to come." He rose
to his feet ; Mary shook her head quickly. "Not now.
You'll have to blame me ; she won't come now. Think
165

i66 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

for yourself; was it fair?" She turned the other edge
of the same argument on him.

"No," he muttered, *T knew it wasn't. And I
wanted to help her.'* He did not say that he had justi-
fied himself with the beHef that she was now no longer
a child, nor perhaps even a maid. He did think that.
The sense of futility he had felt before overcame him.
"Oh, well — Miss Dark, will you be her friend? I — I
guess I can't. And if there is anything I can do, let
me know."

"I am her friend," said Mary, and knew it was time
to go. "By the way, perhaps I'd better — resign?"

"Hell, no !" He turned on her. "Excuse me. But
I guess I need you, too. Stay, if you don't mind. If
you won't leave me anything else, you might at least
stick around." He laughed.

"Thank you," said Mary, and went, to find that
matters were not, after all, closed, and to wait in much
disquiet for whatever else might chance.

But she was at work when Hope returned, and there
had been no further message. Mrs. Hamilton was
out, also. Hope let herself in. Only Bobby came run-
ning to welcome her with gurglings and unintelligible
words of joy. She dropped her suit-case and caught
him up in her arms, throwing back her veil and look-
ing about as one returned after long wandering looks
at half-forgotten places. Her face was subdued, and
more than usually pale. Bobby was heavy, but she
clasped both arms about him and sat down, holding
him tight. He pulled at her necklet.

"Booful," he commented gravely.

"Yes, dear," she said inattentively, her glance still
ranging about the room.

Everything was the same ! To Mary it had all been
different; and they were equally surprised. She sat
waiting, until the door-bell rang. Then she rose with

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 167

an air of meeting something expected. Yet, when Lis-
beth Patten stood revealed on her threshold, it was
plain she had thought to see someone else.

"Lisbeth," she cried. "But I am glad to see you!
Come in. Were you looking for Mary? She's not
home yet!"

"No, I was looking for you," said Lisbeth. She was
breathing a little quickly. "Did you just get back
from Banff?"

"From Banff? I was — oh, yes, I just got in. Do
you know, it seems a long time since I've seen you?
Weeks, isn't it? You look well, Lisbeth."

"Do I ?" Lisbeth was strangely restless ; she walked
across the room and back, sat, and rose again, to choose
another chair. "Did you enjoy yourself?"

Hope flushed unaccountably.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so." She was suddenly con-
strained. "Shall we have some tea? I need — some-
thing."

Mrs. Patten seemed uncertain, said "no" and "y^s,"
and finally sat still tensely, while Hope went to the
kitchen for the kettle. Bobby stared at her solemnly
a moment, until she bent a sudden glance on him,
whereat he fled kitchenwards also. Hope came back
alone.

"I met Ned a few minutes ago," said Mrs. Patten
at last.

"Did you?" asked Hope, and even while she spoke
wondered why her words had been so non-committal.

"Yes." There was a long pause. "He was in Banff,
too, wasn't he?"

"Why, yes." Now Hope was really surprised; she
had never seen Lisbeth like this. She looked like one
who goes to meet a shock; her face was deadly calm,
and her eyes feverish. Her long, beautiful hands oc-
cupied themselves mechanically with the teacup; her

i68 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

straight brows, drawn together a trifle, gave her reg-
ular features a little the look of a Greek tragedy mask.
She was biting her full red underlip nervously. Lis-
beth had the mouth of the "Autrichienne," a lovely, im-
practical, passionately impulsive mouth, that gave the
lie direct to her thoughtful forehead. "He must have
told you."

**He wrote me," said Mrs. Patten. "But I didn't
think he meant He's always having romantic fan-
cies, and he's always told me " She paused, catch-
ing her breath.

"Told you— what? What is it, Lisbeth? Say it!"
Hope spoke with unconscious imperativeness.

"Hope, you don't care for him," said Lisbeth des-
perately. "Show him you don't. Of course, you were
always friends ; I care for you, too. You didn't think
of him that way! You've been unhappy, too; you
know what it's like — I'm a fool, I know it — but don't
take him from me." Her hands were trembling now ;
the cup and saucer clinked musically. "You could

never give him what I could — what I have Send

him away !"

"Why — why ?" said Hope, in a kind of fearful whis-
per. "Does it really make any difference?"

"It's true, then?" said Lisbeth. She put down the
cup and put her hands to her eyes. "You mean to
marry him ! But why do you want to ? You couldn't
love him so soon. I didn't believe him; I came to see
you. You did promise ?"

"Promise — what?" repeated Hope uncertainly, and
again : "Does it make so much difference to you ?"

"All the difference," said Lisbeth. "He— I— we ■"

She uncovered her face, and let the rest go unspoken.
"You see, that's why I can come and ask you — to
send him away."

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 169

"How can I ?" asked Hope. "We — were married —
five days ago."

Mrs. Patten rose, looked about her blindly, and
dropped back in a swoon.

The pressing need of the moment, to see Lisbeth
open her eyes again, to bring back the colour to her
pale lips and know she had not all unwittingly actually
killed the woman she truly cared for, automatically
shut Hope off from consideration of her own plight.
She was like a man injured in a railway wreck, who
does not notice the pain because there are others in
still greater distress. She ran for water and dabbled
it on Lisbeth's forehead, spoke to her distractedly,
holding the pretty helpless head against her bosom.
When Lisbeth sighed and her lids fluttered, Hope
clasped her closer, and a tear, of which she was
unconscious, fell on Lisbeth's cheek. Lisbeth put up
her hand to it, and said almost pettishly :

"That's enough, dear; I'm all right." Then she
looked up and said, "Oh!"

She sat upright, and they sat staring at each other
dumbly, their glances imploring pardon, each for what
she had done. If either of them had known, before
it was too late ; before they had acted or spoken ! They
were dismayed at the irrevocableness of deeds and
words. How was it possible that two people who had
never had any but the gentlest thoughts of each other
could so devastate each other's lives? Why, it was
silly ! That was what Lisbeth meant, though her words
were:

"I — I think I must go. Is my hair " Her mouth

began to tremble; she stopped, then went on, "It's
wet; have you a handkerchief or something?"

Hope gave her a handkerchief and said:

"Can't you forgive me — ever ?" Her words sounded
strange and irrelevant in the face of Lisbeth's obvious

170 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

determination to withdraw herself definitely, to turn
back the page.

"I don't need to. I — am fond of you — just as much.

Sometime " She dabbed her eyes again, choking

at the thought of that intervening, empty space be-
tween "now" and "sometime." "I should like to talk
to you again," she said wistfully. "Not now — it's bet-
ter— not." She looked about, as if for a way of escape,
not from the room, but from the net of life.

"May I have some powder?" she said at last.

After putting it on with great care, she walked to
the door, holding her chin up, and paused with her
hand on the knob. The bell rang sharply, cutting off
something she would have said. Hope started and
paled ; for the first and last time, Lisbeth saw her look
frightened. She understood instantly, before the ring
ceased.

"No," she said, "don't do anything. Don't you see ?
We've got to go through with it. Don't let him know.
You mustn't. Not for me ; for both of you. Dear, I
hope you'll be happy." She smiled, but even while she
smiled, her chin went higher, stifily, as if something in
her throat hurt her. Then she turned the knob, and
was face to face with Ned.

He had not her preparation ; if it had been less than
impossible, he would have fled. Everything that Hope
already knew was written in his face, wiiich set like
that of one guarding against a blow.

"Hello, Ned," said Lisbeth, her voice light and cool
and faintly mocking. "I was just going; sorry. Some
other time, perhaps? Good-bye, Hope." Suddenly
she went back, leaving Ned gaping, stooped and kissed
Hope on the cheek. "Good-bye," she repeated, and
went out.

Instantly Hope was aware that, of the two who but
now had been before her, the one she loved most was

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 171

gone! And what should she say to Ned? All she
knew was that there was one thing she must not say.

Lisbeth's wishes, aside from any other consideration,
prevented.

"I didn't think you could get through so soon," she
said finally.

Ned drew a long breath, perhaps of relief. That
was not what he had expected.

He had been to the bank to report. "They thought
I needn't go back till to-morrow," he said.

Hope reflected, watching him, that he looked ab-
surdly young, so that it did not seem possible to hate
him. It is hard to hate any young thing ; one can only
feel annoyed, and possibly aghast at its capacity for
mischief. She did not know how shockingly young
she looked herself. Ned had been to his rooms, evi-
dently; he was brushed and shining, shaven, wearing
a fresh suit and immaculate linen ; his rather handsome
eyes looked anxiously at her, like those of a puppy
convicted of chewing up a slipper, but his mouth was
sulky, and he fidgeted with his hat. Hope never knew,
then or afterwards, in just what light he appeared to
himself. But at the bottom of his heart he knew he
had done an unforgivable thing, and yet he felt it
wrong that any poor weak mortal should be able to
do just such a thing.

There ou^t, it seemed to him, to be no unforgiv-
able thing possible. It was like having the punishment
of a god, without the prerogatives. There must be
forgiveness for him, somehow. Had he not performed
a man's duty — married? It was, to say the least, de-
moralising to be damned for a thing so commendable !
He was staggered at the vast gulf yawning between
the requirements of a man's own soul and of society;
he had never known before that such a discrepancy
was possible. And Hope stood before him as the em-

172 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

bodiment of both his soul and society, since she was
the woman he loved and the woman he had married.

The incongruous part of it was that he had not been
thinking of society when he had married ; he had done
that for the satisfaction of his soul; and now his soul
accused him, and society was satisfied.

Lisbeth had shown him that; she had left him to
settle her account in his own heart.

Of course he had not time to think of these things
at the moment; but he knew them, nevertheless. He
merely went on to say :

"I have to go back up town, though ; my trunk seems
to be lost. Shall I come back and get you for din-
ner?"

"Yes, if you wish/' said Hope. What else was there
to say?

She had hardly moved when Mary came a little later
and her eyes were dry. She merely looked perplexed
and languid. Without prelude, she flung the fact of
her marriage at Mary, in a manner almost indifferent.

''Gott!" remarked Mary, and sat down on Hope's
hat.

Hope observed the incident, and said casually:

"Be careful of the hatpin."

"Lisbeth was here awhile ago," she added, looking
at Mary closely.

Beyond the need of words, Mary's expression was
saying: "You unspeakable idiot! You poor child I"
At mention of Lisbeth, her face grew inscrutable.

"Did you tell her? What did she say?" she asked.

"What do you suppose?" said Hope, and Mary
knew. "After all, I wonder if "

"If I wouldn't have done better to mind my own
business at first ?" supplied Mary acutely. "Well — we
don't really know." She thought of Emily, of Edger-
ton, of Yorke, even, whose destinies she had managed

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 173

to control through at least one crucial moment, and
looked at Hope, for whose sake she had done it all,
and who had brought it all to naught. "I did every-
thing beautifully — except the one thing I set out to
do," she said at last. **By the way, where have you
been all the time?"

"We went down to Foster's ranch — I didn't know
them; they live down below Canmore. Ned's been
there before, fishing. It's very pretty."

It was a relief to both of them to drop the danger-
ous subject, but they could not quite keep away from
it.

"And what are you going to do now? I mean,
where shall you live — and all that?"

"Quien sabe?" Hope looked around the light, cheer-
ful room, and felt a sudden anticipatory home-sickness
for it. "Oh, Mary, what shall I do ?"

But Mary confessed frankly that in the role of
Providence she had come to the end of her resources.

"But for this," she asked only, "could you have been
happy with him? Were you?"

Hope flushed violently.

"I thought we should get on all right," she said
simply.

"Maybe you will," said Mary more cheerfully. "Re-
member, time is a great solvent, if one can wait for
it."

"I will try," said Hope. "I understand you. It is
my business now to bring this out right. If only he
hadn't come in and found Lisbeth here !"

There, in truth, was the difficulty. What had passed
between the two women Ned did not know, and for
many reasons he dared not ask. As she went to the
door, Lisbeth had walked between them and drawn
an invisible line, left a shadow, and Hope could not
and Ned would not overstep it. So they remained

174 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

apart, watchful, brooding, as they sat that night at
dinner on either side the table. Four days of it they
had, and all the time the distance grew and grew.
This, thought Hope, was an impossible situation — but
would it be the better if one or other of them dragged
the truth to light ? Could he ever forgive her for for-
giving him such a thing? H she had never known, or
if he had never guessed she knew, he might in time
have put it away from him, locked his mind on it all,
and been made a man by the power of that "p^^Y ^^^
terror" of the ancients. There are some things none
will risk twice after facing once. And sometimes pun-
ishment fails of its effect by being too thorough; it
leaves nothing to be redeemed. The subtle Chinese
call this "losing face," than which death is better.

"Isn't it time you made the announcement of your
marriage?" asked Mary, after those days had passed.
"And what have you decided to do?"

"Nothing," said Hope. "Ask Ned. I can't. Do
you know where he is now ?" Mary did not. "He is
seeing Lisbeth somewhere."

"For what?"

"She wanted to. I learned by accident — he lies so
badly. And I know her handwriting. I think I under-
stand ; she doesn't know what she wants, but she feels
as if she's got to see him — to convince herself. I felt
that way about Tony ; that's why I wanted to do some-
thing else, quickly, not to humiliate myself. Ned went
because he's afraid. Please don't tell anyone yet."
Hope was still with Mary in their old apartment
Whatever rumour might be abroad of her, there was
no certitude. "Wait till this evening," she said finally.
"Perhaps I can tell you then."

She did come to a decision, and Mary, after a mo-
mentary casting about for some argument in rebuttal,
acquiesced.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 175

"I shall have to go away," she said, "end it before
it's really begun. I've tried — but haven't we broken
the contract already? We said we would be 'not
afraid with any amazement,' and we are — we are ! But
the real reason is that he won't help. I tried him out ;
I told him I was thinking of going home for a short
visit, and would he mind? Mary, he looked glad!
Well, it's too much for me, that's all. Do you know,"
she added thoughtfully, 'T don't think he got what
he expected out of it, either."

"I should think not," said Mary dryly.

Poor Ned, he had grasped his bubble, had waded
through the uttermost depths of dishonour to reach it,
and it had broken in his hand.

He knew she was going forever. She did not tell
him; it was not needed. They could see each other
with terrible distinctness. They could not reach each
other. He went to the station with her, for what rea-
son they did not quite know ; perhaps because it did not
seem to matter. At the last moment they clasped
hands quickly and fell apart again, looking at each
other with a kind of desperation, a silent confession
of inability to grapple with the problem each presented
to the other. She did not look out of the window as
the train drew out.

Mary had asked her as she packed:

"Do you never cry, Hope?"

"I can't," said Hope, as if that, too, were beyond
her strength. "But I know I shall — after a while."

She thought she would go and look at the sea. It
was so powerful, so old, so always new, so beautiful
and without pity. She did not want pity.

Packed away neatly she had half a dozen letters
from Mary to people who might be able to help her
find a footing. But that part of the future did not
seem to matter so much. Mary knew people all over

176 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

the world, and reassured her needlessly as to her ability
to make her way in some sort.

"I thought you meant to come with me," said Hope.

"I promised to stay," said Mary.

So she went alone, as she had come.

PART II
THE FORTY-SIXTH LATITUDE

CHAPTER XVII

THE carpet was red, and a red-flowered screen
stood in front of the wood-fire in the grate.
A rose-coloured lantern hung over the electric
lamp. In the tempered light Hope looked not a day
older. Perhaps she should not have; three years is no
great time in the early twenties. But to Mary's quietly
observant second glance it was plain she was thinner,
and her sleepy eyes seemed larger, still softly blue, but
impenetrable. Inquiring eyes still, now they volun-
teered nothing; and her thinness brought out strongly
the salient line from chin to ear.

"I never noticed the visible sign of her obstinacy
before," thought Mary, saying aloud :

"You're pretty sometimes, Hope."

"What a backhander," remarked Hope. "Would
you like me to tell you you must have been pretty
once ? I look a hag by daylight. Did you come all this
way to flatter me? Tell me all the news instantly.
Oh, if I could tell you how I've missed you !"

"Well, I was pretty once," remarked Mary placidly.
**That's no mean consolation — at thirty. And I came
all this way to beat you. You should be strong enough
to stand it now ; you weren't when you left."

"Maybe I'm not now," said Hope. "I nearly killed
myself kicking against the pricks for a long, long time.
177

178 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

If I look well-preserved, it's because I pickled myself
in brine of my own making. I had to stop when I
found I was getting nerves. Extraordinary things,
nerves. Have you any?"

"Enough," said Mary. "You never told me, in your
letters ?"

"About my teapot tempests? They weren't worth
it." She rose and went across the room to pick up a
fan of carved sandalwood, but merely played with it,
as if her hands demanded occupation. And she no
longer relaxed into her chair, but seemed always ready
to leave it again. It was true ; she had made immense
drains on her reserve vitality, and she knew herself
that now she lived from day to day, storing up nothing.
But it did not seem a matter of moment. "But news,
woman, news !" she demanded.

"I think I must have written you everything," said
Mary. "That Lisbeth's gone abroad — I was so glad
when the money came to her."

"Is she happy?" asked Hope softly, almost as if
afraid of the word.

"There are several kinds of happiness," said Mary.
"Yes, she has hers. Did you know that she hoped you
would write?"

"No. But I am glad. I suppose we felt just the
same ! I wanted her to write. How is Con — Mr. Ed-
gerton ?"

"He's made another million," said Mary, laughing.
"And he sent you this. I saved it till you should ask."
She reached into the bosom of her gown and drew out
a carved gold bracelet, held on a ribbon. "I was so
afraid of losing it. He said you had such round arms."

"He does remember me," said Hope, with mirth in
her eye.

"Do you remember him?"

And Hope showed hers^f different.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 179

"You want to know if I regret him? No, but Fm
glad I knew him. What a plague he missed ! I don't
believe I regret anything much — what's done is done —
except "

"Except who ?"

"Except Allen Kirby." And Hope laughed at the
open surprise in Mary's face. *T wonder what be-
came of him, and I'll never know."

*1 daresay you do," said Mary drily. "He was
the only one who escaped you, wasn't he? Well, I
used to envy you both sometimes ; you were so young.
You are very comfortable here."

It was comfortable, if shabby; there was room
enough, a big window for the drawing-board, large
cha>s in which the mistress of the place could be pleas-
antly swallowed up, and the spiritual consolation of
an open fire. Hope had taken it over in toto from
some migrating bachelor tenant, and, characteris-
tically, had altered nothing in it, unless by a very few
small additions.

"Yes," she said, grinning, "you can let your soul
down here; there's not an atom of taste in it to live
up to. Nothing to clash with my Art ! And that Chi-
nese lantern is the greatest labour saver. When I
haven't time to dust, I simply drop that over the lamp.
I call the whole place The Tub !"

"You pup!" remarked Mary, in her delicious, well-
bred tones. "Hope, does your Art progress?"

"Well, you've seen it," said Hope dubiously. She
drew for a coloured Sunday fashion page of a city
daily — large-eyed and sweetly simpering girls in me-
ticulously up-to-date frocks — and filled in during the
week with whatever might be required of her in the
way of special illustrations, some of which betrayed
an impish humour that struggled through her limited
technique with more or less success. "I don't think

i8o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

it's a topic for polite conversation. Ask me how I like
Seattle; nobody has for nearly a year and I miss the
dear old question."

"How do you like Seattle?"

"Very much. A newspaper is rather fun, isn't it?"

"It gives you the key of the fields, to a certain ex-
tent," agreed Mary, in whose mind that point had spe-
cial importance just then. "Have you many friends
here?"

Hope shook her head, rose, and walked about the
room again.

"No," she said. "Acquaintances — some agreeable
people. I can't seem to put anyone in the place you
and the others occupied. Oh, I have been so lonely,
but I didn't want new people. But look, I like this
better than the dust and desolation I left." She drew
back the curtain. Mary came and stood beside her.
The house stood on top of one of Seattle's myriad hills,
and over the roofs of the buildings that dropped away
like a vast dark stairway to the harbour they could
see far down, to a galaxy of twinkling lights that
marked the mast-heads of ships from all the ports of
the world. And a climbing rose peered in at the case-
ment from the violet dusk. "I like all that," said
Hope. "I daresay I'm romantic yet. Sometimes I go
down to the docks and mouse around for hours, snif-
fing at bales of stuff in tea-matting and piles of square
timber — smells of spices and cedar and the salt water
— and Chinamen and bilges," she broke off, laughing.
"There are weird shops down there, too, and yellow-
faced people, and big tall turbaned men with black
beards — Sikhs. And lumberjacks and sailormen. I
wish I could really draw. You must come down to-
morrow. No, I haven't really any friends. Oh,
bother!"

The door-bell was tinkling apologetically. She

THE MAGPIE'S NEST i8i

dropped the curtain and went across the room quickly,
but drew the door open only a few inches. Mary had
a momentary glimpse of a tentative looking young man,
quite a personable youth, holding his hat in his hand
in a manner ludicrously suggestive of one waiting for
instructions. He must have said good evening, at least,
but Hope did not listen.

"Fm sorry, Ches," she said. "I forgot; and I'm
busy. I want to talk to Mary to-night. She came a
day early. I don't believe I'll have any time this week
— why, yes, you might take us round to see the town ;
I never thought of that. Telephone me; good night."
She closed the door again with decision, and the tenta-
tive youth apparently ceased to exist.

"Well, if you haven't any friends, I should think
you must have a few enemies," suggested Mary
mildly.

"Who— Ches Landry? Oh, bosh!" She seemed to
think that enough, but amplified, with a yawn, "I didn't
say I was a hermit. It serves him right," she added
darkly.

"Because he's a man?"

"Oh, no — really, I have a sense of humour left.
He's merely an example of it. The first time I met
him he said he didn't like me, and I heard about it !"

Envisioning that waiting attitude, Mary said:

"Nero was at that rate a great humourist. Do you-
jest often?"

"Now, you're inquisitive," said Hope defensively.
"Well, there was one other ; but I wasn't the humourist
that time. Perhaps you'll appreciate this, so I will
divest myself of honour and tell you. I had a pro-
posal here — one. His name doesn't matter, but there's
his portrait." She tossed over a photo of another man,
not so young quite, but still ornamental, wearing that
peculiar expression of insouciance almost typical of the

i82 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

man who, with every opportunity to succeed, still fails.
Just such a look Tony Yorke had. "He didn't belong
here, and he clung to my hearthstone like a drowning
mariner."

"A drowning mariner," reflected Mary audibly,
"really might make a better choice of something to
cling to than a hearthstone."

"So might this party," retorted Hope promptly. "I
was just telling you he was a stranger here, and
'that's how it all began.' I became quite an agreeable
habit to him, and, falling in with what I suspect was
another habit of his, he proposed. He told me that he
had had his romance, and no doubt I had had mine;
he could not ask my first girlish love, or words to that
effect, and hoped I felt the same. I was positively
quite sympathetic, and he told me how his heart had
been blighted. She was all that was lovely and good,
but neither of 'em had much money, so she married
another man who had. It broke their hearts, of course,
but what could they do? He gave her his blessing.
Do you know — would you believe it — he really thought
she had done something highly creditable in landing
the man with money! Yes, he respected her for it!
I simply goggled at him, and asked why on earth they
couldn't have taken a chance and lived on what he
earned. I shall never forget his answer. He said I
didn't understand — she was too fine and rare — why, she
paid fifteen dollars a pair for her shoes! I told him
I did, too, sometimes, and earned the money myself.
We weren't really simpatico, after that."

"But are you divorced — did you tell him you were
free ?" Truly Hope had changed.

"I did not," said Hope. "I do not tell anything to
anyone. Mary, do you just happen to know anything
about Ned ? Where is he — and what — and why ?"

"I believe he is back in Montreal, still in the bank,"

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 183

said Mary. "Of course, you know his people, after
everything "

"Ah, yes, that's something else I should like to know
now. What was 'everything' ? People did hear of it,
then?"

"Oh, heavens," said Mary, "it was a nine days' won-
der; everyone knew, and no one knew just how it got
about. If I had felt like laughing, I'd have laughed
myself weary, watching them try to make up their
minds to ask me, and not doing it. Ned closed up like
a clam, too. And his people heard, and he went home
suddenly, and went into the bank again at home.
That's all I know. Do you still think "

"No. I was just curious." She sighed a little, and
poked the fire absently. It was late spring, but the
evenings were still refreshingly cool. "I forgot to
ask about Emily Edgerton."

"She's engaged to someone I don't know — a man
from the East, I think," said Mary. "I saw her
awhile ago; she's quite wonderful."

One other, too, she had forgotten to ask about. Not
once did she mention Tony Yorke's name, and at the
end of the visit Mary was convinced it was from
neither pride nor pique, but because she did not care.
But then neither did she seem to care much for any-
thing ; that inquiry in her eyes was terribly impersonal.
Mary had come to see, and now she did not like what
she saw. Once she had vowed she would never again
play deus ex machina, but what was a vow against a
friend ? Mary thought deeply during the week of her
stay, and sifted Hope's life to the bottom. In it she
found only husks and a few vivid memories ; poor food
for a soul that must fare as it may. Hope had grown
— she even looked physically taller, perhaps because of
her thinness — she was a woman, now, but she had not
come into a woman's heritage.

i84 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

The episode of Ches Landry served as a keynote to
her emotional state. Hope had really told it all in the
one sentence. When she met him she had had her
face turned from men in apathy, hardly in scorn;
and his casual flouting of her had affected her
strangely. Was she not desirable — she, who had been
torn by the very claws of desire ? It was to make noth-
ing of her griefs, and, in short, she would not en-
dure it. And then, having vindicated her right to
her own woe, he was nothing to her. He had never
kissed her lips ; more, he had hardly touched her hand.
She made a casual confession of that to Mary, and
turned her emotions inside out briefly for her friend's
enlightenment.

"I understand, now ; I haven't got my astounding ig-
norance for an excuse. So I can't play at it all any
more. Con used to kiss me sometimes, and it just
meant to me that he was kind and I liked him. What
should I do if I met him again? Well, I'm sorry
about Ches — that is, if I've hurt him ; he never said —
I was a cat; I won't do it again. But you can see it's
those terms or nothing; and he doesn't go away.
There won't be any others, probably."

"You flatter yourself," said Mary.

"No, I don't," said Hope. "I used to. I was always
weaving nets and throwing them to the winds to snare
love. Not for any one man — but every girl's like that
— you know yourself, you find what you're looking for.
Like a sailor whistling up a wind; it's our attitude.
If it hadn't been for that, should I ever have taken
Ned seriously? Why, I thought that men might die
for love; not that I quite foresaw him in such ex-
tremity, but it seemed a terrible thing for me — as if
every touch of fever might be mortal 1 Maybe love
does make the world go round ; but at that, I needn't
have imagined it would stop turning because a young

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 185

cub sighed in vain after some particular girl." She
laughed lightly.

If in the face of that declaration it seemed foolish
of her to be still so spent and undone, the point were
missed. She suffered not from the mere loss of the
desired object, but from the moral shock of seeing
Tony as he was, and the following revelation of her
marriage. To have her sand castle swept away by the
tide was perhaps no great matter — but what dead men's
bones had come to light in the backwash!

And now she firmly believed she was done with all
that.

*'Read Merimee," said Mary. "He has wisdom for
you." She quoted : " 'You have troubles of the mind,
pleasures of the mind, but the viscera called heart is
developed at 25 years of age only, in the forty-sixth
latitude. When you shall have a heart for good . . .
you shall regret the good old days when you were liv-
ing only by the mind, and you shall see that the evils
which make you suffer now are only pinpricks in com-
parison with the stabs which shall rain on you when
the days of passion come !' "

"Yes, no doubt," said Hope rather absently, but with
a sudden unlooked-for kindling of energy in eyes and
figure. "No; I mean, you're wide of the mark. You
know why I was so anxious to have you come now."

"I thought you wanted to see me," Mary offered.

"So I did, idiot ! But it was to say morituri, te salu-
tamus. I am going away."

"Now, you've forestalled me," said Mary, with mild
disgust. "I came to make you go. And where?"

"To find the forty-sixth latitude ? No, of course not.
I'm going to find the other things. There are other
things, aren't there? No sentimental journey. I feel
so — so ridiculous, after sitting around moping for three

i86 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

years. If you want to express a similar opinion, do
so.

"No, I decline to waste words. But tell me, what
do you really hope to find ?" All Mary's worldly wis-
dom was in the anxious glance she bent on Hope. This
romanticism — how it could disguise itself, reappear
smiling with a fresh face! "Do you hope to be fa-
mous ?'*

"The woman is mad," scoffed Hope. "Famous ? I ?
No. But I'm going to get something/* she said, with
an assumption of dark mysteriousness that did not con-
ceal a real determination.

"But what?" asked Mary rather wildly.

"I'll tell you when I get it." She sobered suddenly.
"Why, Mary, I thought you believed in life ?"

"Yes — no — of course I do. The only people who
don't commit suicide."

"Too dogmatic. Some of 'em live just through in-
anition. Well, I'm going after the thing we believe in,
whatever it is. It doesn't seem to be love."

"Much you know about love," scoffed Mary, under
her breath.

Hope divined the words, and answered them only
with an impudent sidelong glance.

"Whatever it is," she repeated calmly. "Maybe the
thing itself is only knowledge of what it is. Giggle at
my grandiloquence, if you like; but also admire my
practical nature. I have a tender young shoot of a
bank account already, provision against the seven lean
years while I shall be walking around the walls of
Jericho blowing my trumpet."

"Blowing your nose," returned Mary in mild exas-
peration. "When you mix your allusions, do it thor-
oughly. Now, why must you take the wind out of
my sails, when my heart was set on meddling again ?"

She meddled so far as to press an emergency fund

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 187

on Hope of a hundred dollars. She did not mention
that the money was not her own, but said it could be
easily spared. In fact, it came from Edgerton, a sort
of last tribute. He saw her, at Mary's determination —
already confided to him — receding still further from
him, in time and physical distance; and speeded her
with gifts and garlands, like a Hawaiian host.

A week was all too short, Hope said pleadingly, for
Mary's visit, which had been long deferred. She was
silenced when Mary at last divulged her reason for
haste.

"My divorce is to be heard," she said, "very shortly,
before the Senate."

"Why, Mary !" Hope almost shrieked, "I never knew
you were married!"

"No?" said Mary interestedly. "I suppose I forgot
I had left all that behind me in the East. Some people
there knew it, of course; I believe I took you for
granted. But you never heard gossip. You are so
tactful, though, that no doubt that was why I thought
you never mentioned it. You have a tactful heart.
You ought to get a divorce yourself. No family should
be without one."

"It's expensive," said Hope dubiously. "And what
would I do with it? I have so many other things to
do. How does it come you are getting one now ? You
see, my heart has hardened."

"Because at last I have been able to produce a rea-
son that convinces my worthy uncle." Mary smiled.
"You shall hear it some time. Uncle is putting the
divorce through quietly, and paying for it. With his
influence, there will be no trouble — nor publicity.
Now, we must plan for your descent on the great
world."

They talked of that, and did not mention the divorce
again.

i88 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

So Hope was a-wing again when Mary left ; or if not
yet, still she was poised for flight; her resolution was
made. There remained only the summer for prepara-
tion.

The curious thing about this was that she was going
with neither joy nor interest, but merely urged by
something iron in her own soul that refused to be
still and rust.

CHAPTER XVIII

AFTER nearly a week in the train Hope felt
that she never again wished to move one inch
from where she lay. It was a long, long way
she had come, not only in that week, but in all the years
since she had left home, and when the persistent day-
light at last crept under her eyelids she merely turned
and dragged another pillow over as a bulwark. New
York was waiting for her to come out and conquer it,
but at least it could not break into her hotel room and
demand to be conquered immediately.

How bare the walls of an hotel room were. And
they were all the background she had achieved. They
must be furnished and decorated. What a lot of time
she had wasted. Well, she would think about that to-
morrow. She was hovering again on the verge of
sleep, and beginning to feel hungry at the same time,
when the sound of a turning knob brought her up
sharply, a trifle wild-eyed, confronting the opening
door with a ready-to-spring expression — much as if
she suspected New York was indeed about to enter
and demand either conquest or surrender.

"Who's there?" she cried. Her tone was so
fierce that the maid, whose latch-key had served since
Hope forgot, in the weariness of the night before, to
shoot the bolt, started and dropped an armful of tow-
els. "I beg your pardon," both women said fervently
and simultaneously, and Hope added, "Do come in.
I should like to hear a human voice."

The maid, a cheerful and not uncomely person, past
189

iQo THE MAGPIE'S NEST

her first youth, still looked rather alarmed, but en-
tered.

*'rm sorr)- I disturbed you," she said. "It's a nice
morning. I thought I'd seen you leave ; I guess it was
the lady next door."

"I will soon," Hope promised. "But I have just
come from the Pacific Coast, and I need some rest."

"Really?" The maid also probably suflfered from
loneliness in her rounds. "I always thought I'd like to
go there. But my folks live here, and I guess it's silly
to throw up a good job and run off on a wild goose
chase."

"Isn't it ?" Hope agreed cordially, and wished Mary
could hear. "Is your work nice here ?"

"Oh, yes; we have a lovely housekeeper. I'm her
assistant, but we're short-handed now, so I have to do
this."

"Then you might take me on," said Hope. "I used
to be a room maid; I know enough to put the wide
hem at the top, and I can put a pillow in a case with-
out holding it in my teeth, and heaps of things."

"You were — oh, you're joking." The woman smiled,
glancing at the silver-backed brushes and mirror on
the dressing-table, and then at a crepe negligS lying
across the foot of the bed. Hope dressed to please
herself, she said, and was extravagant in peculiarly
personal ways.

"No, I'm not. And I came to New York to look
for work."

"I guess you'll find it, all right," said the maid con-
solingly, laying out fresh towels with mathematical
precision and small haste, glad of a pretext to linger.
"This is a big town. What do you aim to do?"

"Draw pictures." Hope was rather enjoying her-
self ; she told herself gravely that the footboard of the

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 191

bed was a back fence, and she was really getting ac-
quainted with New York.

"Well, you must be clever," said the good-hearted
creature. 'Maybe Fll see them some day in the maga-
zines."

**rm going to attack the newspapers first," said
Hope, smiling. "If I'm not good enough for them,
maybe the magazines will do. And when I have spent
my last nickel for a bun to eat in the park — I under-
stand that's the thing to do — I'll come back here and
ask you to take me on. Whom shall I ask for?"

"Mrs. Merrick. I'll certainly do it," said the other
cordially.

Hope wondered where Mr. Merrick might be — won-
dered how many New York held of such unattached
married women as herself.

"Now," she said, scrambling out of bed, "since I
have an anchor to windward, I can go forth with con-
fidence. Me for the shops." As she had avowed to
Mary, she intended to "put up a front."

She went about dressing, gurgling a song into her
shower bath and later executing a pas seul with only
one shoe on, in a moment of unreflective enthusiasm.

So for three days she deployed and skirmished on
the shops, with a wholly feminine joy of conflict. The
vast city, mile on mile of brick and stone, filled her with
mingled admiration, horror, and a sense of her own
insignificance. In her moments of depression it was
to her like a senseless triumph of destruction ; for man
had obliterated the face of nature, and, like some
malevolent upheaval of primal forces, left scarcely a
blade of grass alive where he had passed. Again,
when she walked the length of Fifth Avenue on a sun-
nily cool morning, the glitter and lightness of it, the
marvellous windows and the dainty women who went
by like artificial lilies of the field, were a magnificent

192 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

show, useless, perishable, but infinitely costly and so
remote from the common soil, so far from the strong
roots of the world on which they flourished like rare
parasites on the top of a great tree, as to carry a sug-
gestion of the utter unreality of fairyland. The im-
pression was heightened, perhaps, by Hope's peremp-
tory need of human companionship, and the knowledge
that to these people she did not exist ; she might have
**cried on them and they would not hear." But for
a greeting once a day from Mrs. Merrick, who in
truth came out of her way for it each morning, she
had spoken to no one in New York.

"Why, it's worse than solitary confinement," she ex-
claimed suddenly, having reached the Plaza, pushed
on and on, walking with that light elastic step she had
gained on the prairie, and, traversing Central Park,
come out at the upper end against fresh rows of stolid
brick and mortar. **I can't get out — nor in !" A city
of enchantment and terror and paradox. "It is big,"
she conceded, and for a long time pondered of what it
reminded her, waking with a start to the conscious
recollection of those endless reaches of soft dun-col-
oured landscape that had been her childish world. But
there had been an end to that — when she had grown
up to it — there must be to this. Some way to pierce
or surmount it. "It's so big," she reflected again, "I'll
have to find a little, little crack, and creep through like
a mole ; I want to get to the heart of it. I suppose I'd
better begin !"

So she took a bus back to the Washington Arch, and
thence, with splendid ostentation that concealed a
doubt of her own ability to master the intricacies of
Subway or Elevated, a taxicab carried her to Park
Row. It was only three dollars — whatever it should
have been — very little, indeed, to pay as an initiation
fee.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 193

"A taxi !" the editor of the Courier remarked after
her. Having a letter to him from a man he had long
since forgotten — after the fashion of New York — she
had not found him difficult of access. And he was the
only editor in New York whose name — it was Ken-
nard — was known to her. He had white hair, and the
face of a young man who has known trouble. "Now,
you don't want to come to work for us?" He seized
a handful of damp page proofs from a boy, glanced at
them with an air of hostility, and threw them to the
floor in a crumpled mass, smiling at Hope before he
had time to get his eyebrows disentangled from the
frown of the moment before. It gave him a very curi-
ous expression — an expression of hopeless goodwill,
she described it afterward. Perhaps because of the
many hundreds of her he had seen before, and knew
he would yet see. They fairly beat over him like a
tide — the surge of youth against the rocks of experi-
ence. He always did what he could for them. "No,"
he said sadly, "you don't want to work for us. We
can't afford taxi-cabs."

"Neither can I," she returned engagingly, "And I
picked you out especially to work for; the taxi was
simply a compliment."

"Umph!" He assaulted another bundle of proofs.
"What can you do?"

Immediately, with the nervous deftness of a tyro
prestidigitator, she unrolled beneath his nose a bundle
of her choicest specimens. He seemed to be only push-
ing them aside; her heart went down and down, and
jumped suddenly.

"I see," he said. "Come around next week; say
Monday."

And she went out, propelled by the mere force of his
will.

Evidently he meant all along to accept her services.

194 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Or perhaps her sheer unspoken hopefulness decided
him when she came again. In the meantime she had
gone nowhere else, feeling as if it might cross her luck
in her first attempt. At any rate, after a moment,
when he appeared to be trying to remember where he
had met her before, he abruptly swept her down the
long city room and delivered her over, with an air of
relief and the manner of one executing a writ of habeas
corpus, to a sub-editor. The sub-editor, who was fat
and worried-looking, in turn, after one harassed glance
shooed her toward a thin, tired, sharply handsome
woman of no particular age. This one sat before a
typewriter in the attitude of one plucking out its vitals
and flinging them in the face of a despised public.

"You'll work with Mrs. Garvice ; she'll tell you what
to do," said the fat sub-editor. ''Come and see me
about it later ; we'll talk things over a bit. We're start-
ing some new specials — women's dope."

Mrs. Garvice pushed a mass of fair hair from her
brow, as if making room for a new impression to be
devoted to Hope.

"How do you do? I'll be through with this in half
an hour — mind waiting?" She fell on the typewriter
again.

One or two reporters glanced at Hope casually, and
looked away again. Hope knew and liked the atmos-
phere of a newspaper office ; it suited her temperament ;
nowhere else in the world do men and women work
together with such brusque friendliness, so little con-
sciousness of sex; it is a workshop above everything,
and those in it like their work or they would not be
there. But for that very reason it is no place to look
for personal companionship. Waiting, Hope won-
dered where then she might look. Not in a boarding-
house; that she had never been able to endure. She
stayed on at the hotel tentatively.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 195

It did not seem possible to make friends with Mrs.
Garvice, who was not unfriendly, but gave the impres-
sion of having her life already crowded beyond reason.
In a week, two weeks, Hope knew her no better,
though they went for material together almost every
day, getting impressions of "prominent women," or
women who would be prominent for at least a day
when they were dished up to the public fancy.

Two weeks can be a very long time on a desert
island, or worse, in a strange city. When Hope met
Evelyn Curtis, she saw her with an eye sharpened by
loneliness; here was another like herself. She was
interviewing a wealthy woman who kept a creche for
a whim ; she had been shown into a long, rather dark,
luxurious drawing-room — to her mild surprise, on the
second floor — of a brown stone house, one of forty
exactly alike in a semi-fashionable street off Fifth
Avenue. Hope remembered it very vaguely after-
ward ; she had had so many new impressions, but even
before she looked comprehendingly at her hostess she
exchanged a quick glance of greeting with the thin,
dark girl, who sat awkwardly, as if fearful of the un-
accustomed softness, in a gquat and puffy boudoir
lounge.

Evelyn Curtis was very plain; her lack of beauty
was positive; and her too bright black eyes admitted
that she knew it thoroughly. There was infinite pathos
in her smile, for it made her less lovely than before;
she had no bloom; she looked as if she had never
bloomed. She looked starved, body and soul; her
mouth was not red, and her long black hair was lustre-
less. Only her eyes were terribly alive.

The two, strangers in every formal sense, looked at
each other with sympathetic understanding, and felt
that the woman they had both come to see was rather
an interruption.

196 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"She looked stodged," said Hope to Miss Curtis,
after they had escaped from the house together. "Her
very voice was overfed and massaged. What a lot of
New York women look like that !" She had seized the
other's arm, as they went down the brown stone steps
together, disdaining conventional advances.

"You haven't been here long, have you?" said Miss
Curtis, smiling her ugly, pathetically appealing smile.

"No. Have you? How did you guess it?"

"You have a different accent. You're on the Cou-
rierr

"Yes. What are you with? Do you have to rush
right down to the office? Won't you stop and have
supper with me? I haven't eaten with a soul since I
came to New York. Do, do come. Do you notice that
people here don't ask you to eat? They ask you to
have a drink. I almost felt insulted, at first. But I'll
buy you a drink, if you like. Come to my hotel — it
isn't far — and have supper in my room."

"Thank you," said Miss Curtis, obviously surprised,
and perhaps a little grateful. "I'm free lancing; I
don't have to rush off anywhere. Do you live here?
You must be a millionaire." They were approaching
the hotel.

"Indeed I'm not. It's astonishingly cheap here, but
of course I must move. Tell me where I ought to look
for a room. I haven't the least idea. Where do you
live?"

"You wouldn't care for it," said Miss Curtis. "I
pay two dollars a week for my room, downtown. I
have no heat, and the window looks on a blank wall."

"Ugh !" Hope shivered frankly, and unlocked her
door. Her own room looked very comfortable, after
that. "I can't stand cold — I've had too much of it.
Wait till I tell them to send up food." She telephoned
and resumed the conversation. "I suppose you live in

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 197

Bohemia. I'm not Bohemian; I'm bourgeois to my
marrow."

"No," said Miss Curtis simply, "I'm not Bohemian ;
I'm just poor," and she smiled again. "Newspapers
are useful to keep off the cold ; I wear them under my
blouse." She put her hand to her meagre breast, and
Hope heard a slight rustling to the pressure.

"But — but — oh, no," she stammered. "Not really!
I've been poor, too, but "

"Ah, well, I'm one of the unsuccessful ones. But
I'd rather starve here than go back; I used to be a
school-teacher," she said.

"But so was I, in a way; it wasn't as bad as that,"
protested Hope.

She did not quite realise that she was, after all, one
of the capable ones, born to survive, intellectually in-
dependent, but economically adaptable, ready to use
either her head or her hands, and to make the best of
what she had, no matter how much she might protest
and demand more. She was romantic, indeed; but
Evelyn Curtis was a visionary. The story of her
life, as she told it in a dozen sentences, was a better
thing than she would ever write; it touched the deeps
of simple tragedy. Materially she had been very com-
fortable as a school-teacher, but the mental drudgery
of it had grown more than she could bear; and the
Philistinism of her native city was equally intolerable.
She loved books, and failed to grasp the fact that an
appreciation of literature by no means predicates an
ability to write.

In fact, she could not write. Authors were her
demi-gods ; she was a hero-worshipper.

So, with all her savings in hand, Evelyn had set out
on a pilgrimage. She had sat at the feet of most of the
prominent living authors, but even that failed to cure
her. And, after travelling all over the Old World as

198 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

cheaply as possible, she had come back content in her
own way and hungry in the natural order of things.

Now, Hope was an iconoclast, born without rever-
ence or fear, and with the knowledge, despite her one
considerable folly, that man that is born of woman is
small potatoes and few in a hill, in the words of some
anonymous wit she had once read.

"My goodness," she said, overcome when the re-
cital closed, "what does anyone want to meet an au-
thor for ? Or a painter, either, or any famous person ?
You've got all the best of them in whatever they cre-
ate. I'd as soon want to meet the cook because I liked
the meal. This is rather good cold beef, isn't it? Of
course the cook might be interesting " Miss Cur-
tis was laughing heartily, rather as if unused to the
exercise. "But isn't it true?" insisted Hope. "The
interesting people are quite often just interesting;
more likely to be critical than creative. And I am
fond of books, but I don't see what one can get out
of them without actual experience as a key. Of
course I understand you wanting to see the world.
But you really went abroad to see certain people whose
lives and gifts you envied? Wanted to stand around
and live their lives with them, through them. It can-
not be done."

"Perhaps," said Evelyn. "You are very clever and
cruel. Why are you here?"

"To discipline my soul, I suppose," said Hope, grin-
ning. "There must be some meaning in those queer
old religious terms, don't you think? I could feel the
dry rot creeping over me, doing the little easy things
that were nearest. I came on instinct. Something in
me was trying to turn over in its sleep — having a
nightmare. Maybe there is something here for me.
Do you get any meaning at all out of what I'm say-
ing?" Evelyn nodded, her liquid, bright, over-intelli-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 199

gent eyes answering. "If there isn't, I'll go on. I
may stub my toe over it — the whatever-it-is — some
day while I'm rushing madly along. Or I may never
find it, but not because I didn't try. Or — quien sabef
— I've come to the end of my poor imagination."

"You are one of the interesting ones," said Evelyn
musingly.

CHAPTER XIX

HOPE wrinkled her nose.
"That's what one says of a woman who
is neither rich nor beautiful," she said. "But
it's better than calling me clever. Thanks. But I
warn you, to-morrow I may bore you to death. I do
myself, quite often."

"No," insisted Evelyn, laughing, "you are. I can
read other people's fortunes because I have none of
my own. Now you, you'll marry again. I hope your

husband is dead " She paused, rather overcome

by her gaucherie.

"So do I," said Hope piously, "but you're talk-
ing nonsense. Why should I marry again? Enough
is sufficient, but too much is plenty. It sounds
pose, but I am tired of men. I have met millions
of them. Since I left home I have walked a
long, long road, like a Devonshire lane, between solid
hedges and banks of men. Making one's own living
means entering a world of men. It was my sad mis-
take to take them seriously. Just as if I were a girl
in her own home, where all the men I met were care-
fully sifted down to a sentimental residuum. But
we others ought to be different. Since we've followed
the men to their lairs, we ought to be good sports and
let 'em alone. I intend to. I am an adventuress —
no, I am not contradicting myself. I belong to the
new order of honourable adventuresses. Unknown
continents in life — Madam Columbus looking for the

New World Gold, and treasure, and much fame,

you know, like the Raleighs and the Drakes went

300

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 201

after; not a blackbirder out for slaves. There, I'm
out of breath. But don't talk husbands to me; I in-
tend to cultivate women only. Tell me, instead, that
I am a great genius and will be hung by the Academy
and bought by the Metropolitan Museum."

"Columbus was looking for the Indies," Evelyn re-
minded her. "But show me your work and I will
prophesy."

Hope, with good-natured lamentations, dived head
foremost into her trunk and emerged with a portfolio
of remnants.

Evelyn pored over them attentively for a long
time, and Hope suddenly, a little tired, took up a book
and forgot about her. A quick exclamation roused
her.

"What are these?" Evelyn was asking.

"Which?'* Hope tumbled off the bed lazily and
went to look. "Why, my Moon Babies ; I had forgot-
ten them. Mary Dark and I did them, like Alice in
Wonderland, to amuse our landlady's kiddies.
They're nothing. Throw them away — no, they were
Mary's, too." She was suddenly homesick, and won-
dered when she should see Mary again.

"Let me have one story," said Evelyn, with a rather
sly manner.

"Certainly; take what you like. Wait, that one's
all torn; I'll make you a new heading." Hope took
up her sketching block and busied herself for fifteen
minutes. "There, these are your godchildren, spe-
cially made for you. They're so easy to do ! I wish
I could say the same of my other work." She yawned,
looking suddenly older with the ashen tint of fatigue.

Evelyn rose, reluctant, and surveyed the room with
a wistful air, as she buttoned her shabby jacket.

"You're tired" — apologetically — "I shouldn't have
stayed so long."

202 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"I wanted you," said Hope. "Don't mind my looks ;
that's New York. There's something about the air
here — it's harsh, like hard water — makes my bones
feel old. Will you dine with me to-morrow — no, the
next day? To-morrow I have to go out to the races
— fashions and society. But please come the next
day."

She turned her head away suddenly, for there were
tears in Evelyn's eyes. It made her feel rather
ashamed that she should have thought herself so for-
lorn. After Evelyn had gone she examined her own
case as disinterestedly as she could. After all, life
had given her something, and if she had been able to
keep but little, what did that matter? At the end, no
one could keep anything, save memories. Perhaps
even those went also, at the last. And hers were amus-
ing memories, all save one or two that she resolutely
excluded from the present company.

She had liked a number of people — unconsciously
she counted her gains thus in reverse order — Agnes,
and Evan Hardy, and Allen Kirby, and above all Mary
and Lisbeth. And Edgerton, who had a place of his
own in the gallery. The flattery of having deflected
him from his orbit toward hers, he the fixed star and
she the small stray comet, made his memory stick.
And they had all liked her. And — now she went over
carefully all that Mary had told her, and all that she
had guessed, measuring facts against facts, her own
deeds and misdeeds against the world's requirements,
as they were being borne in upon her — she had un-
doubtedly upset and annoyed a great many worthy
people she did not know and would not have liked if
she had known. That was something. Sitting on the
bed, with her knees hugged under her chin, she
laughed in a queer, quiet, impish way, all to herself.
If she had lived at all through that, with the odds so

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 203

heavily against her, might she not win the next time,
by carefully ranging herself on the right side?

"It isn't the wicked that are punished; it's the
fools." So she reflected. "Now, what do I want?
And I will see what I must do to get it." And there
she halted, her mirth slowly evaporating, leaving her
very cold and heavy.

"I do not want anything," she said, and rolled her
hair into a tight bun and kicked her clothes on to
the floor and crept into bed.

That was the mood that had kept her prisoner
within herself for nearly three years now; she had
fled from it, and found it in her pack at the end of
the journey. It disgusted her. There was something
so slack, so puerile and whimpering about it. One
imagined it as garbed in a kimono, with tousled hair.
To fight it was the harder, because of her heavy han-
dicap of physical Hstlessness; she felt half-ill. The
price of her own silly moping, she knew; nights of
black despair and self-indulgent tempers, meals fore-
gone for sheer spiteful rage. She set her teeth to pay
it, replacing zest with courage. If not gaily, then it
must be done grimly. Not that she wanted to become
a simpering and toothful optimist of the current brand,
a creature exuding hollow mirth and sonorous, mad-
deningly inept platitudes. She only wanted to get out-
side herself, her own sorrow and humiliation; to re-
gain the dignity of unselfconsciousness.

But she felt that, despite the most conscientious and
unwilling care of her toilette, she looked thirty years
old and hopeless of this life and the next, as she sat
in the press-box at the races the next day. The reac-
tion of having talked herself out with Evelyn left her
without two words for anyone; she scowled at the
ticket-taker, and was barely civil to a well-meaning re-
porter who found her a chair.

ao4 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

It was a gala day of some sort, perhaps the end
of the season; there was a sprinkling of well-dressed
women in the boxes, and gilded youths with sticks and
boutonnieres. Watching the men, probably because
her business was with the women, Hope wondered
how on earth they managed to look as if all poured
from the same mould: they had small heads, smooth,
vacant faces, and slim waists, and their sticks were
even as a Jew's phylacteries on a feast day, a some-
thing indispensable marking the chosen, of the nature
of a religious observance. It was true, however, that
she viewed these with a jaundiced, not to say bilious,
eye ; there were other men. Hope intolerantly longed
to see just one with large red hands and a number
eighteen collar, and found the hostlers singularly re-
freshing as they appeared occasionally at the pad-
dock entrance, holding the heads of the dainty, high-
mettled horses. The horses delighted her ; they walked
as if there were eggs in the path, and looked coquet-
tishly out of their hoods, pretending to be about to
bolt. The women in the boxes were groomed like the
horses, but not half so pretty; they were not of the
same clean hardness, but were flabby and their eyes
were dull.

Hope knew she was rather outrageously dressed,
in a light greenish heather tweed suit, with a white
waistcoat and spats and a cloth hat, and she com-
pleted the ensemble by sticking a large single glass
in her eye and surveying the whole scene with cold
disdain. She had done it on purpose, having deter-
mined to "put up a front," and the eyeglass was a
final personal insolence addressed to New York in
general. It was useful, certainly, since she must
sketch from a distance, but in Seattle she had found
double eyeglasses quite sufficient. She took out her
sketching block at last and began, rather savagely, on

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 205

the well-fed women, making their faces all alike,
round and like a French doll, but paying the most
careful attention to each detail of their clothes.

Norris Carter told her afterward it was her eye-
glass drew his attention first; the sun glinted on it,
and the sparkle struck in his face. Hope looked up
and through him, with concentrated scorn, and fixed
her rapt gaze on a woman in a purple hat and tanger-
ine coloured coat, and then she bent to her pad again.
The eyeglass infuriated Carter, as a woman's eccen-
tricity does any man, because he knows he is too great
a coward to dare so much himself in the face of his
fellow men. He leaned against the railing and looked
at her, getting a crick in his neck doing it, since the
press-box is high.

"She looks dissipated," he pronounced, observing
her pallor, but faihng to note the faint hollow of
her cheek, its concomitant. "Queer eyes. That green
fades them, or something. Her eyelashes are black.
I'm sure she drinks." Then he caught sight of her
spats, as she shifted and crossed her feet. 'T have
really got to meet her and find out why she does it,"
he said, being thoroughly alive, and interested in al-
most anything. He was waiting for a reporter he
knew. "She looks horribly bad-tempered," he con-
cluded charitably. There was Ellerslie, the man he
knew. He rushed forward and seized him.

"No, I don't know her," said Ellerslie, "but I'll
find someone who does. Another, Nick? Gad, you're
the limit." They climbed to the box.

But it seemed as if no one knew her. At last an-
other reporter said he had met her once, but she did
not seem to remember it, judging by her frosty look.
Under repeated urgings, however, he went forward
and recalled the incident to her.

"I think I do remember," she said, not so uncor-

2o6 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

dially as he had feared. "But you know I'm a perfect
idiot about that sort of thing. My friends invariably
throw a brick at me by way of salutation, to remind
me of their existence and identity. I'm glad there
is someone here I know. Isn't that blackpointed bay
a lovely thing? I've got ten dollars on him. Of
course you may introduce someone. Howjedo, Mr.
Bartett. Did you order a rainstorm? There's one
coming. I hope my bay can swim." She continued
gazing at the horses, and was not quite sure which
of the several men at her elbow — they were crowded
now, since some people have almost a mania for press-
boxes — had been introduced.

There was a storm coming up. Carter disclaimed
any responsibility, and tried to tell her his real name.
She called him Cartwright, and he began to feel deeply
exasperated. Later, as the last race was ending and
they were making their way gingerly across the muddy
"lawn" toward the exit and the cars, she piled on the
last straw. He had implored her to wait for an
umbrella, or whatever protection he might be able to
conjure up.

"Thanks, but don't trouble," she said. "I daresay
I'm more used to this sort of thing than you."

He wanted to box her ears. Did he look like a man
of sugar, or as if he feared the weather? All she
had in mind was that it rained seven months of the
year in Seattle ; but he could not know that.

"Why," he began in an aggrieved tone, "I've lived
half my life out of doors. I "

Now what had she done? She knew that tone,
from long habit of stepping on people's toes un-
awares. How had she insulted this — she took her
first real look at him — very agreeable young man?

A very comely young man, too — was it possible?
He had strong-looking hands, tanned beyond fash-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 207

lonable requirements ; he had no stick ; he had a fresh
brown face with wide-open blue eyes — and where
had she seen such yellow hair on any man? It was
unusual, but familiar.

"Haven't I seen you before?" he asked abruptly,
voicing her thoughts so neatly that she started.

"Could you ever forget me?" she asked gravely,
keeping her eyes down.

"Not now," he countered readily.

"Oh, piffle!" was her mental comment. "Served
me right." And she did not answer, not knowing
what to say. They splashed along silently.

"You look tired," he ventured at last.

"Do I ?" with marked indifference. "It's this green
suit ; makes me look yellow. I fancy you mean cross,
though. I lost twenty dollars on those deceitful
horses; can you blame me? Look at my lovely white
spatterdashes — nice name, they look it now." The
mud was creeping up them in streaks and spots ; they
were a deplorable sight. "All the money I had in
the world," she went on dreamily.

Somehow that remark gave him a dreadful pang —
to think of her losing all she had in the world. All
she was thinking was that it meant she simply must,
now, find a cheaper room somewhere, for this ex-
travagance of betting, on top of her previous ex-
travagance of clothes, had taken almost all her re-
serve fund.

But he could only express his anxiety indirectly, and
returned to the weather.

"You're getting soaked," he declared almost angrily.

"I like it, honestly," she said. "Like rain, and the
feel of rough weather if it isn't too cold; I like even
this mud, after the New York pavements. You
know, those millions of miles of streets, and even
the parks paved and railed off, make you feel as if

2o8 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

you'd never get your feet on the earth again. People
in New York don't, do they ? I get home-sick for the
wilderness sometimes; I don't want it always, but a
touch of it is so sane."

She was surprised that she had found so much
to say, and still more at his quick enthusiasm. He
asked her if she did not love the Adirondacks, and
she confessed they were no more than a name to her.

"I come from a very far country," she said, and
named it vaguely as "the Northwest."

"Where?" he asked. "I travelled through there
once, more than ten years ago."

"No; did you?" She turned and looked at him
hard. Now she knew she had seen him before; the
picture rose in her mind vividly. Would it for him?
No, that was not possible; he had merely fallen back
on a cliche when he had said that. To punish him
she was silent on what was going through her mind;
it was more amusing not to tell him, and she re-
mained purposely vague to his repeated "Where?"

"All over," she said. "I cannot stay anywhere.
By and by I shall fly away from New York. There
is my car. Thank you."

"Where do you live in New York?" He tried to
make the question casual as he helped her aboard;
duty compelled him to rejoin the party he had come
with, though they might have gone by now.

She told him the name of her hotel, and maliciously
refrained from adding that she would undoubtedly
leave within a day or two. He would forget it any-
way; people did forget, in New York. And he did
not write it down, so she felt more certain.

He did not in the least need to write it down.

CHAPTER XX

WATCHING him unobserved from the cor-
ners of her long Hght grey eyes, Mrs. Stur-
tevant felt certain that Norris had some-
thing on his mind. Being a woman, she felt equally
certain it was another woman. It was not intuition so
much as the mere vanity from which neither sex is
exempt, a vanity of sex itself, told her so; but it was
truth none the less. They were in Mrs. Sturtevant's
own drawing-room, a very delightful room, full of
sunlight and graceful Colonial furniture and masses
of pale flowers. Norris was there very frequently,
as a cousin may be without examining his conscience
on the matter, even if only a second cousin.

The drawing-room suited Grace Sturtevant per-
fectly. She knew that, and had once, in a moment of
studied cynicism, told a friend that she had been
obliged to eliminate her husband — by way of the
divorce court — because he simply did not match either
of them. He was a large, ruddy, full-blooded crea-
ture, or had been when she saw him last, some years
before. What he was now she neither knew nor
cared; though, to do her justice, she had once cared
very deeply.

She was tall, almost taller than her cousin, and
looked as like him as one so different could. But
the likeness was fined down, attenuated, as in a half-
tone copy of an oil painting. She was slim, and very
white; her complexion endured with credit the prox-
imity of the white and pale pink blossoms she loved;
her hands and feet were long and narrow, what is
209

2IO THE MAGPIE'S NEST

called patrician, and her straight, silky hair of an
ash-blond tint. "Distinguee," her friends called her;
she did not object to the adjective.

**Do sit down, Nick," she said at last. Her voice
was cultivated, clear, passionless ; it seemed to express
her perfectly — and did not. "Spare my carpet," she
added lightly. "I cannot afford a new one. Are you
in love or in debt? You have all the symptoms."

''Neither, thanks," he said, slowly.

For one fleeting moment he was inclined to confide
in her; it was no particular distrust of her stayed
his tongue, but rather a shamefaced thought that the
whole matter was so trivial as to border on the absurd.
The fact was that had he belonged to the species for
which such naive volumes are compiled, he would
have been resorting to a "Guide to Manners" on
"How a Young Gentleman Should Pay His First Ad-
dresses to a Young Lady He Respectfully Admires.'*
He wanted, in brief, to call on Mrs. Angell — he did
not know her name was Hope and frankly wondered
what it might be.

Now he had never before found it a difficult matter
to call upon any woman, and that alone upset him
seriously. Perhaps it was because of her maltreat-
ment of his name; possibly he feared she would call
him Mr. CartwrighL again, or even be unable to get
so near as that to fixing his identity. It would be
quite horrible to have to account for himself in detail
and give a reason for his mere existence while at-
tempting at the same time to explain why he was
there giving such a reason. The matter at that point
became too complicated to be pursued further, but
it seemed to have endless possibilities and ramifica-
tions. Nor was it simplified by the fact that he had
already been to her hotel and discovered her absent;
and the knowledge of having bribed the desk clerk

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 211

with a cigar to ask the porter whither her trunk had
been conveyed — she had said she would call for let-
ters, if any came — weighed on him like a secret crime.

But, having gone so far, he felt bound in honour
to himself to reach a conclusion — and the lady of his
quest. He had got her telephone number, too; at
least, that of her landlady. It was a real problem to
him whether he should telephone her, or go in person.
Actually, he had twice removed the telephone from
its hook intending to take the first alternative, and
backed down ignominiously, and the remembrance of
that made him rise and walk across the room each
time it came to his mind, which was every five minutes
or so. He wondered feebly if his brain might be
giving way.

Hang it all, she would hardly bite him! She was
only about as big as a minute and also, he reflected
with a certain malignant satisfaction, she wasn't a
bit pretty. He repeated that to himself several times.
No, she looked washed-out, and her profile was
smudgy; and he distinctly recalled crow's-feet at the
corners of her eyes.

"No, I just feel restless. Sick of town. If I could
get away I think I'd go up to the North Woods for a
month; I'd like to sniff a camp-fire again, and sleep
under the stars." Hope had talked about the wilder-
ness.

"My dear Nicko," said Mrs. Sturtevant, with pro-
voking calm, "you came back from the Adirondacks
just ten days ago, didn't you? Think up a better
one. Or why not tell the truth?"

"Oh, Grace," he said, with a rather rueful laugh,
"call oflF your bear. You always make me feel as if
I'd been up to something positively criminal. I can't
help it if I'm a wild ass in the desert. I guess I'll
beat it down town ; I ought to be there anyway. Busi-

212 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

ness," he added, with that firm vagueness a man always
employs when using that magic word, twin sister to
charity in its powers of benevolent concealment.

"If you'd only grow up," sighed Mrs. Sturtevant,
and came to him, laying her long white fingers on his
sleeve.

A faint glow, a warmth, came into her cool eyes;
and a veiled impatience. Ah, if he would! She had
waited so long, years, for him to grow up; and he
was still the boy she had played with when she was
in pigtails and he in knickers. She had grown up,
though she was one of those fine-grained, poised crea-
tures who awaken slowly. Marriage had been her
hothouse, but when she had come to maturity there
was nothing one-sided about it; her excellent brain
was equal to her well-conserved emotional nature.
And now, sometimes Nick made her feel not only
mature but old! Why, why did he remain so mad-
deningly the same, when all else in her apparently
solid world had changed so incredibly? There were
times when she very primitively longed to slap him,
as an exasperated tutor might an inattentive pupil.

"Oh, now, Gracie," he began deprecatingly, his eyes
twinkling. "What do you want — grey hair, or to see
me tottering around on crutches?"

What did she want ? Her hand dropped ; she turned
away, her movements gracefully deliberate, and went
to the window, a curiously general trick of anyone
who has need of concealment.

"You are a fool, Nick," she said sharply, "but not
so much as that. I made the mistake of being really
interested in — in your welfare; you will pardon me.
If you do not care, there is no reason why I should."

Sometimes he thought Grace was growing a bit
shrewish, she disapproved of him so often and so
candidly. But he was used to it; he put it down to

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 213

her one great disappointment — ^the one of which he
knew. Women, anyway, he thought, were rather
inclined to worry a chap. They were always scolding
him, at least, and it was not that he was ever anything
but nice to them. And good old Grace was really
fond of him, he felt sure; comfortably sure, just as
he was of his own fondness for her.

"I'm getting on your nerves," he remarked resign-
edly. "I'm off."

"Nonsense," she said brusquely. "Aren't you going
to stay and see the babies? Maddie will absolutely
howl the roof down if she finds you've been here and
gone."

"All right, if you can stand me a little longer." She
smiled at that; he put his hat down. "They ought
to be back soon." Madeline was an imp and a dar-
ling, and he was more than fond of her. That she
reciprocated with enthusiasm was evident when a
moment later her nurse brought her in, bright-eyed
and rosy, with flying curls, fresh from a walk.

"Oh, Micky," she screamed in a delighted treble,
hurling herself at his legs, "tackling low," as he put
it. "Here is me. What've you dot for me?"

"Little pig," he said, tossing her to his shoulder.
"Got a kiss — tied with a pink ribbon. Hello, sonny;
how's tricks?"

Grace's boy, who was two years older than Made-
line, came forward more gravely, but even so rather
boisterously. They swarmed over him, ruffling his
hair, going through his pockets, and getting their
hands gently slapped for it, whereat Madeline pouted
and looked at him with a roguish side-glance. Mrs.
Sturtevant, watching him carry Madeline on one
strong arm to a sofa, was silent, her face singularly
immobile. She had always been a trifle afraid to

214 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

classify her emotions when she saw him with her
children — another man's children — in his arms.

**You spoil them, Nick," she said at last, still a
little sharply.

"Get out! I spank them more than you do," he
retorted, with some truth. "You spoil 'em ; you simply
send them out of your sight when they misbehave,
and then they go on misbehaving where you can't
see them. Maddie, isn't your mummy a naughty
girl?"

"I love my mummy," said Madeline, with sudden
grave loyalty. *7 am a naughty girl. Yesterday, I
stealed a little cake." She looked so pensively proud
of her own wickedness that even Mrs. Sturtevant
laughed.

"Then," said Carter, "I shall have to bring you a
little cake, so you won't need to steal one. Now I
must go." Madeline threatened tears, but was paci-
fied with promises of an early return.

"You won't stay to dinner?" said Mrs. Sturtevant.

"I've an engagement for dinner," answered Carter,
and hoped that later that might happen to be true.

Mrs. Sturtevant shrugged her slim shoulders.

"Very well. Au 'voir."

He was gone. Maddie came and climbed up on her
lap, unnoticed, and presently put her arms about her
mother's neck.

"Mummy sick?" she asked sorrowfully.

Mrs. Sturtevant started.

"Yes, dear," she said, as if with an effort. "Mum-
my's head aches. Run away to nursie."

So, left quite alone, she sat very straight and still,
trying to question herself closely, looking at her own
heart, out of a certain natural pride in her honesty
with herself. How long had she cared for Nick like
this? But she could not positively remember; not

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 215

even when she had been aware of it first, for it
seemed to her now that she must have cared for
him longer than she had known. Having always
schooled herself to exquisite restraint, kept her emo-
tions far below the surface, such unawareness had not
been difficult. It was a family tradition with her peo-
ple, the Camberwells, to be "sensible." And another
family tradition, that of loyalty, unconsciously trans-
lated by Grace into a feeling of personal ownership,
had helped to blind her. Jealousy had been needed
to bring the truth home to her. Once he had been
reported engaged to another woman, a false report,
but before she knew it false she had hated that other
woman utterly. And then she knew, though very
slowly had she acknowledged it.

But he would never know. Unless he sought the
knowledge. She set her teeth on that; pretty, rather
sharp-looking, small teeth.

There was something hopeless about not even being
able to remember when it had begun. It made the
end look equally uncertain.

She went to the old, dim gilt-framed mirror at the
far end of the drawing-room, and studied herself for
a long time, and turned away with a bitter pride in
the fact that nothing in her face betrayed her. And
a wistful wonder — was that face not fair ? Other men
had thought so. There is no woman who is not beau-
tiful to her own eyes in the light of the one man's
praise ; nor one who is not despoiled of all the usufruct
of beauty if he prove blind.

In the meantime her cousin was ringing Hope's
door-bell — or at least her landlady's door-bell — in a
pitiable state of incertitude as to what he should say
if he found Hope at home. By the time the door
opened he quite hoped she would not be at home.

CHAPTER XXI

SHE was at home, taking down her hair — it was
a fancy of hers that she could think better with
her hair in a braid — and speculating on the
vanity of life. New York she thought was worse than
a merry-go-round, in which no one could stop a mo-
ment without losing his mount and falling out of the
procession. And the procession apparently went in
a circle. In a month she had not made even one
acquaintance, except Evelyn Curtis, and Evelyn Cur-
tis had gone home to Kansas City or Indianapolis or
wherever it was, to stay probably the rest of the winter.

In short, Hope was lonely, and there was no com-
panionship in sight unless she talked to Mrs. Hassard,
her new landlady; and Hope had always said she
could bore herself much better than anyone else could.
Mrs. Hassard, like every other New York landlady,
had seen better days — so had Hope, as it was raining
vilely — and was not reticent about the fact. For-
tunately, Hope had some work to do. She was
rather troubled about her work, and unsure whether
she was living up to her editor's hopes, if he had ever
cherished any. Her drawings were neither silly
enough nor good enough, she felt in the depths of her
candid soul.

It would be nice to have someone to talk to. Evi-
dently Mrs. Hassard had; Hope heard the bell ring,
and then voices in the passage, approaching her door.

"I'm sure she's in," Mrs. Hassard was saying, "and
it will be nice for her to have company; but wait and
216

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 217

ril see if she's going out again." The door, which
was not latched, swung open. *'0h, Mrs. Angell,
there's a gentleman to see you."

"Why, I — I haven't " any place to see him, she

was about to say, and then observed the gentleman him-
self, having got his wish, looking at her appealingly
over Mrs. Hassard's shoulder.

"You're not going out, are you?" that lady in-
quired.

"How do you do, Mr. Carter? No, I'm not going
out "

Then it was too late to make any further protest;
Mrs. Hassard shooed him into the room and de-
parted, smiling and a trifle fluttered. It subtly flatters
any woman's vanity, somehow, to see a man suing for
the favour of even another woman. Besides, people
usually did smile at Norris Carter.

"How do you do ?" said Hope again, and offered him
a handful of hairpins. "Will you sit down ? I — really,
I didn't know I could have anyone here ; but I suppose
in New York you can do anything. I have seen land-
ladies who would curl up and die at the idea "

then it occurred to her that she might be making him
feel an intruder, and added, with a spontaneous
laugh, "but I am excessively glad to see you, and how
on earth did you find me?"

"I tracked you by your footprints," he told her,
and looked around the room with an odd, quick glance.
He was looking for signs of a husband! "Mrs. An-
gell, have you had dinner?"

"I had tea," she said, sitting down and jabbing the
hairpins into her hastily coiled tresses at random. With
amazement Carter noticed that she did not look in
the mirror. "So it is all right; you are not de trop.
Usually I dine late, at that white marble palace of
Mr. Childs's across the street. We can talk awhile;

2i8 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

I am bursting with conversation. I have a month of
it bottled up in me. Put on your life preserver."

"Put on your hat instead," he returned, her chat-
ter having restored him to his native well-bred au-
dacity, *'and we will go out and find some place, per-
haps not so palatial, but quieter than Mr. Childs's. I
came to take you to dinner."

"It is not possible," she gasped, in mock astonish-
ment. "People do everything else in New York ; they
give you cocktails and good advice and theatre tickets,
but they do not eat. I — I — wait one moment; I'm
afraid you'll get away." She seized her hat and put
it on with burlesqued haste. Then she smiled at him
rather coaxingly, and took it off again. "Mayn't we
talk a little while first?" she asked. "Are you very
hungry ?"

What could he answer to that? It was half -past
nine when they finally went to dinner, and much too
late to go to a theatre afterwards, as he had planned.

"Would you believe it," she said, leaning across the
small table to make her voice heard above the din of
the orchestra, "this is the first time I've been in one
of these far-famed gilded caravansaries? If this is a
sample, I believe they're overrated. I can't think here,
can you?"

"People don't come here to think," he assured her.
"But haven't you really seen anything of New York ?"

"Not if this is New York," she said. He felt quite
unreasonably glad. "I've seen the Metropolitan Mu-
seum," she added in extenuation. "And — and — the
Elevated ! I have a lovely view of it from my window.
And — there was something else I saw, but I forget
what. Probably Central Park."

"Haven't you any friends here?"

"Not a friend," she said calmly, spearing a small
oyster with a tiny silver fork and looking at it du-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 219

biously. Being an inlander, she was not thoroughly
acclimated to oysters, but he had ordered them, and
she felt obliged to eat them.

"And your husband isn't here either?" He felt rude
and presumptuous, but he wanted to know.

"I have no husband," she said deliberately. And ate
the oyster.

Three years before she had closed her mind and her
lips upon that subject, and she saw no reason for
rescinding her resolution now. She hated women
who paraded their woes, anyway.

"Mrs. Angell," said Carter slowly, "will you let me
be your friend?"

"By all means," she said amiably, with a smiling lift
of her brows. "Why not?" Could one say less to a
young man whose dinner one was even at the moment
consuming ?

"No, but truly," he persisted, "I do want to be your
friend. Won't you think of me as one?"

But he was in earnest ! She looked at him with un-
disguised astonishment, and yet recollected it was thus
almost all her friendships had begun, suddenly. Only
no one else had ever been so insistent about the defi-
nition of his status. Unless Edgerton, who had wanted
to help her, at once. Her heart felt warm at the rec-
ollection, and at this young man's candid haste. But
she said thoughtfully:

"One doesn't have many friends, you know. I
should think six a liberal allowance for life. And
you don't know anything about me." It did not occur
to her that she knew less of him. "But if you wish
to try, I am sure it would be very nice — for me." She
smiled at him, thinking him rather naive, but liking
him none the less for it.

Once when she was about eighteen, and still a pupil
at Normal School, she had for a brief while known a

220 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

boy, little more than her own age, a real boy, just
blundering into manhood, full of the high and hopeless
and perhaps rather foolish ideals that rightly belong
to that troublous time ; and he and she had talked of
friendship, feeling themselves immensely original and
treating the subject with a kind of tremulous solemnity
which they felt due to themselves as pioneers in a
new and vast field. He had been a more than usually
handsome youth — Hope had the healthiest of pagan
instincts in that respect — and she was sorry when he
went away to an Eastern college and their lives per-
manently divided. Sometimes since she laughed over
it all, but she liked it, too, as a memory. It had been
very brief, and perhaps the better for that.

She wondered how old Carter might be. Twenty-
nine, she guessed. He was thirty-two. But the sheen
of his thick yellow hair — close cropped as it was — the
clearness of his wide-open blue eyes and brown skin,
still a shade darker than his hair, and the cleft in his
chin that was hardly more than a dimple, took from
his years deceptively. A touch of cynicism crept into
her thoughts. Did he really believe himself?

Then she thought of what she had said to Mary,
about no longer casting nets for love, and wondered
if she had spoken more truly than she knew. It might
be possible — all sorts of things were possible, to which
her life stood witness. And it was less trouble to be-
lieve than not, since it could not matter to her if he
lied. What object could he have? She shrugged her
shoulders. Amusement, perhaps — but she needed
amusement too.

Thought runs quickly; all that had come and gone
while he was saying, still seriously:

"Thank you."

"Don't," she said, shaking her head, "you will find

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 221

I give nothing for nothing. I am warning you, I will
get the best of the bargain."

"And I should like to show you New York," he
went on.

"You prove my contention," she smiled. "I should
like that very much. But not any more to-night; I
have some work to do."

So she went straight home, and insisted on walk-
ing, though the pavements were still glistening with
rain. Carter could see that her thin slippers were
soaked, and when she coughed slightly he almost re-
monstrated angrily.

"Oh, pshaw," she said, "I've been wet for the last
three years, and I promise I'll change as soon as I get
in. Will that do you?"

He had to agree to it. But when she was in her
own room she sat for several minutes thinking about
him conscientiously. She had purposely not told him
of meeting him before ; it still seemed amusing to have
that in reserve. A sudden chill roused her out of her
abstraction; she got hastily into a dressing-gown and
drew her chair to the light and fell to work. And
her dreams were not of him, nor of any young man.

Yet it did not seem to surprise her particularly when
he came again the next night, and many nights there-
after. It was rather comfortable to see him sitting
there in that atrocious mahogany rocking-chair, with
the light focussing on his head and his eager gaze seek-
ing hers so frankly. She was a social creature, if not
strictly gregarious ; and then, too, he so obviously ex-
erted himself to interest her— not a common habit of
young men as she knew them — and he looked so thor-
oughly alive, and he looked happy t She owned to
being tired herself; a lassitude was creeping into her
veins, and his vitality stimulated her.

Or, if he did not come in the evening, it might be

222 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

because he had already found some place she must
see that afternoon. As a cicerone she found him in-
defatigable, and whatever was unusual in New York
he knew. Old bits of it, forgotten corners, and such
historic landmarks as still retain more than a name;
and then those exotic sections where the Old World
or the Orient has been transplanted bodily. She liked
Fraunces Tavern better than Rector's, and the sight
of Betty Jumel's andirons standing before Betty's cold
hearth was almost as good, after a tiring morning, as
the sight of her own fender. And a cup of tea at Yen
Mok's drunk out of thin cups without handles, with
neither sugar nor milk, had all the East in it, and her
ow;i lazy days in Seattle, watching the blue Pacific.
She could never have enjoyed the city so well with-
out his eyes to see it through.

But when he still talked of friendship, her first
rather cheerful cynicism faded to genuine perplexity
and then turned and rent her as a hypocrite. He was
in earnest. After he had told her as much about him-
self as she invited, and included an account of Grace
Sturtevant in the recital, he dispersed her doubts with
one simple remark.

"I want you to meet Grace," he said. "She's th^
nearest to a sister I've got; and she can't help but like
you. She's clever, too; you two ought to get on fa-
mously. It must be lonesome for you here without any
women friends."

How long had she known him ? Less than a month,
at any rate; but a desert island could not have
furthered the acquaintance more than her solitary
existence.

"That is very kind of you," she murmured. "More
than kind. Of course I should be pleased to meet your
cousin. You really are good to put yourself out."

"I'm not putting myself out," he said almost im-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 223

patiently. "I like you more than any woman I've met
in years. I said I'd try to be your friend, if you'd let
me." Impulsively he leaned over and took her hand.

She looked at him and smiled. In the circumstances
that might have meant almost anything. It might have
meant an invitation. But he dropped her hand as if
it burned him, and a dark red tide flowed up to the
very edge of his bright hair.

"Friends?" she said gently.

"I — I beg your pardon. I meant what I said — and
I wasn't thinking "

"Never mind," she said, the smile deepening into a
laugh. "Your risk, you know."

"Yes," he said doggedly, "I do know just what you
mean. And you're wrong. I am your friend. And
I never loved any woman in my life, and I never ex-
pect to. It looks like rot to me — all that sort of thing,
and marrying."

"How sensible you are," she said enigmatically,
veiling the mischievous spark in her eyes. "I don't
see how you knew without trying it. We won't quarrel
about it, anyway. Really, really," she laughed again,
full-throated, "I assure you nothing could induce me
to marry you. I am much more *sot' against it than
you. I have the best of reasons." She went off into
a burst of merriment that lasted minutes and made
her wipe her eyes before she could fairly see him
again.

"Oh, go on," he said, putting his hands in his pockets,
still rather ruddier than need be, but smiling perforce.
"I let myself in for it, all right. Rub it in. But you
know perfectly well what I meant. I just didn't want
you to imagine I meant to bother you — to be an ass,
that way. Just because I like you — and I "

"Have a few bad habits," she said. "No, really, it
is quite all right. I promise, I will never even hint at

224 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

marrying you." And then they both shouted with
laughter.

It was only after he had gone she began to feel like
a hypocrite. "He does believe himself," she thought,
with unspeakable amazement. "And I really am not
even his friend. If he never came again, I wouldn't
miss him for more than twenty-four hours — well, a
week, if no one else came."

**I wasn't thinking," he had said, with a great deal
more truth than he dreamed.

And then, at this point in her reflections, Hope
pulled off her shoes and threw them across the room
with violence, as a slight expression of disgust at her-
self. Was it possible that she was again flattering
herself with that old puerile nonsense about her own
importance, and the importance of a moment's fancy
of a man for the chance woman ? Hadn't she had one
quite thorough lesson on that subject? What if he
did dig a pit for himself and fall into it? Let him
climb out again. It was his own business. "Men had
died from time to time, and worms had eaten them,
but not for love." What appeared to her as her own
monumental conceit toppled and fell on her and she
lay meekly prostrate under the ruins.

And, when he did not come the next day, though
he had come every day for a week, she made no at-
tempt to extricate herself from that humble position.

But as the rain had stopped, making way for a
stretch of glorious Indian summer, and her cough con-
tinued, she decided she would go out of town for a
day, or over the week end, and look at the sea again,
her old medicine of the soul. Mrs. Hassard told her
of some hotel with an unpronounceable name in some
unget-at-able comer of Staten Island, which she was
assured would be at once cheap and quiet now, since
the summer was over. She went in search of it.

CHAPTER XXII

LYING full length on the sun-browned, soft grass,
among dead soft yellow leaves and flowers con-
tentedly gone to seed, steeped in sun and a
happy sense of general uselessness, Hope surveyed
the horizon and completed her delight by assuring her-
self that there was not a soul in sight. If she stood
up, she could see the hotel she had just left, but she
did not want to stand up, and she had a positive desire
not to see the hotel. It was undoubtedly a useful place
to leave a suit-case, but little else could be said for it.
She had taken but one full breath of its desolation
and fled, hours before. A summer hotel when the
season is ended, and in mid-week at that, when there
is small chance of even the last leaf fluttering in dis-
consolately, is not a place of cheer.

Before her stretched the sea, with lazy six-inch
swells creaming up on a beach of spotless, delicate
sand. The Atlantic beaches filled Hope with joy; she
had not quite imagined them, after the harsher West
Coast fringes. There was a touch of exquisiteness
about that white, fine path between sea and shore, as
if God had made it with care and pleasure. At her
back was but the edge of the down and the sky, and
she insisted to her drowsily active imagination that
the world ended there. Perhaps someone to help her
insist would have been agreeable, but that could be
dispensed with. Romance dies hard, she reflected,
and smiled, and would have slept, perhaps. But the
grass, which had not even been whispering to a breeze,
swished and crackled softly; and Hope sat up and
225

226 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

looked over her shoulder, ready for annoyed flight
Instead, she sat still, and said:

"Is it you?"

Norris Carter tried to look surprised. He was not
a good actor, but he had an uncritical audience.

"Mrs. Angell!" he cried.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Did I follow you here?"

There are disadvantages about being a fair man.
But Hope did not notice his colour.

"You couldn't have," he said. "I just happened
here ; I was over in the next town on business. When
did you arrive?"

"When the sun was over there. There is no time
here ; at least, my watch stopped as soon as I got here.'*

"Do you mind if I sit down ?" He suited the action
to the word.

"Not at all. I think I must have wished you up out
of nowhere — there was a djinn in a bottle, wasn't
there ? Perhaps you saw him. We are fated to meet,
aren't we?"

"I know I asked you several times before," he said,
comfortably rolling a cigarette and unspeakably re-
lieved to find she took his presence so casually, "but
haven't we met somewhere, ages ago?"

"Where should you say?"

"I will not quote Henley," he said firmly. "But he
may have been right, at that. Because I can't remem-
ber where, and I know I have."

"You couldn't possibly remember," she assured him
gravely. "I was too young — no, that's not a joke. We
did meet."

"Where?" he demanded, almost excitedly.

"You wore a brown Norfolk suit," she went on
calmly, "and a green tie with a scarab pin. I didn't
know it was a scarab then, and I thought it was rather
horrid of you to wear a beetle on your tie. Had you

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 227

just been to Egypt? You had been growing a mous-
tache, and you'd just shaved it off; your upper lip
showed it. I had my hair in curls, and it probably
needed combing. I had no shoes. So you wouldn't
speak to me, because you were a great big man, and
I was a mere, a very mere child. Now do you re-
member ?"

"I luas in Egypt, twelve years ago I think; I came
back by the Pacific route "

"I think you were on a hunting trip," she added,
watching him with a smile. "And you stayed at my
father's house, with two other men. One of them
was then the sixth vice president of the C. P. R."

"We stopped — there was a girl there," he said slowly.
"But she was grown up; it wasn't you."

"My oldest sister," said Hope, laughing. "We
look a bit alike, but we aren't. She is a re-
spectable married woman, and I am a gipsy. Don't
you remember me at all?" She looked mockingly
mournful. "A little, scared, homely girl in a corner."

"There was a little girl," he said. "It was you!"
This as if some rare phenomenon had been presented
to him.

"Kittens make cats ; little girls grow up," she nodded.
"It is me."

"Good Lord!" he remarked, seemingly overcome.

•*0h, now, it isn't serious," she assured him. "Where
are you stopping? Oh, that's where my worldly be-
longings are checked. But I'm really going to stay
out here on the beach."

"Then I'll have to stay out too," he declared, "and
chase away the lions and crabs a la Newburg, and
things." They laughed as if he had said something
witty. "Won't you tell me the rest now?" he asked.
"If you were there, why are you here? It's a long
way."

228 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"For a little girl with no shoes," she added. He
really had been thinking something like that. "All
right, if you will tell me about when you were a
conquering young hero with a moustache. What do
you want to know first?"

"What's your little name?" he demanded.

"It is a little name," she owned. "My name is
Hope."

"Hope ?" he said, as if expecting her to continue.

"That's all," she said sadly. "Just Hope. It stopped
growing when very young. I think I should have
been called Despair. That's very subtle of me, isn't
it?"

"My name's Norris, you know," he said, "but every-
one calls me Nick. That's very subtle too — if your
last name's Carter."

"I love silly people," she said solemnly, and they
laughed again. "Let's be perfectly silly all afternoon."

They had a whole world to themselves wherein to
be as foolish as they chose; and the mere space and
sun were enough to raise the spirits of two reason-
ably healthy young animals to the bubbling point. They
rescued old memories from the limbo of forgotten
things and told absurd tales of their childhood and
adolescence.

"My father is really to blame for my being here,"
she said, when he later harked back to his question.
"He went as far as he could in one direction, and I
am only exploring the back trail. I couldn't help it;
we have to go and go — the Fieldings. He pursued the
wilderness, and I am investigating civilisation. It's
wearing work sometimes, and this," she looked about
her, "is a relief. The wilderness is gone, so I come
down to the sea ; the sea doesn't change. Tell me, do
you often have such wonderful days as this at this
time of year? Is this actually October?" The air

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 229

was almost languidly warm; it was a rarely perfect
day. "I should like to go in swimming," she said idly,
and then sat up, the light of daring kindling in her eye.
"I will go in swimming," she declared. ''I have my
bathing suit with me."

"The water is cold, really it is," he said. She cast
a mildly scornful eye on him; he thought of her pre-
vious aspersions concerning his fear of the weather,
and capitulated without another word. "I will borrow
a bathing suit," he said.

The hotelkeeper looked at him with tolerant con-
tempt, but produced the article; they retained their
coats, and went back to the beach.

The water was cold, but intensely invigorating.
Hope was not a strong swimmer, but she liked the
green depths, the little sparkling waves, the buoyant,
yielding, enfolding embrace of the salt water, and
struck out steadily seaward, swimming slowly, her wet
face upturned to the sun. He stayed at her elbow,
with some difficulty restraining his stroke; he swam
like a seal. His damp yellow hair glistened, like a lost
treasure; she saw that his arms and neck were as
tanned as his face ; and the gleam of his blue eyes be-
tween his spray-beaded lashes was like a reflection of
the sky. ^sthetically, she admitted, he was very sat-
isfactory; not like some of the poor things she had
seen on the beaches, who looked wilted and bleached
and miserably exposed, like ill-grown celery untimely
brought to the light of day.

She was breathing quickly, and her stroke faltered.

"Shall we turn back ?" he asked.

She smiled, and followed his suggestion. And then
she realised that the tide was going out; it had borne
her farther than she knew, and she could make little
headway against it. It drew her slowly, irresistibly,
making sport of her will; the slight undertow caught

230 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

at her feet ; the whole great ocean seemed set against
her, bent on carrying her far out, beyond sight of
the land and all familiar things. She was not terrified,
but she felt immensely insignificant, and curiously ex-
alted, as if she were a part of the encompassing flood,
and for a moment, forgetting that she was not alone,
there was a strange temptation to yield herself to the
strength of the tide, to go with it as far as it would
take her. In a little while longer she would certainly
have felt fear, but she had no sensation of sinking
yet; she was simply poised between her own efforts
and the pull of the tide, Norris spoke in her ear :

"Put your hand on my shoulder "

He had seen quite clearly that she was powerless.
She looked at him quickly, and obeyed. He went
ahead in a sudden noiseless spurt, cleaving the water
as if it were his native element, making nothing of the
drag she must have been to him. She did what she
could, but it was not much. Yet it seemed the briefest
minute — it was perhaps ten — until she felt the firm
sand beneath her feet and stood up, with that heavy
languorous feeling of one who has come out of the
water to the lighter ether.

"I am tired," she said simply. "Thank you. I
couldn't have got back alone." A slight breeze touched
them; she shivered.

"You're cold," he amended sharply. He was still
trying to protect her from the elements; she looked
fragile to him, and as if she should be so shielded.

"Yes. Let's run." They did, and fell onto the
steps of the hotel out of breath and aglow.

Later, when they had dressed, they went back to
the beach again and took up the interrupted tale. She
let her hair fly on her shoulders to dry. It had the
pleasing quality, rather common to light hair, of not
looking stringy when wet, and the light got into it, and

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 231

gave it more than its natural beauty, for its ordinary
shade was very soft, almost dead, fawn-colour without
the hint of red which makes chestnut hair so lovely.
But hers suited her too pale, waxen skin, and it had
a beautiful texture, the hair "like sea-moss" of Alci-
phron, which Browning recalled. When her face had
that ashen look of fatigue her hair looked faded also;
but now it was charmingly alive, and curled in feathery
ringlets at the nape of her neck. And her crescent
brows were ruffled from the drying of her face, so
that they rose in a curious peak in the centre, two
circumflex accents over her eyes ; and she looked much
younger than her years. The immaturity of her
emotions, checked and arrested in her disastrous love
affair, had kept her face as girlish in expression as
when she was in her teens. Not even her waning
cheek and the fine lines about her eyes could alter it.

*'Odd," he said, his words redeemed from banality
by his positive interest in the fact, "that we should
have met again, after so long. Are you "

"Ami— what?"

"Glad?" he asked, overcoming his self -conscious-
ness with difficulty.

She thought awhile.

"Yes, of course," she decided finally. "Why, it's
almost like going back home. I think that's why I
got used to you so quickly. It does seem as if we'd
been friends for a long time. Of course I have no
one else here. I might be boring you to death!"

"Do I act like it?" he demanded.

"How do you act when you are bored?" she coun-
tered.

"I go away," he said truthfully. "And this time
I Will you be angry if I tell you something?"

"Probably," she said. "I have a most cantankerous

232 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

disposition, and it's been soured by disappointment.
But I won't do more than kill you."

*'Well "

*'Go on," she said, slightly exasperated. Anything
protracted always did exasperate her slightly; she had
described herself rightly as wanting to eat life like
an orange.

"I followed you here," he said, reddening, and
looking slightly defiant. And he picked a blade of
grass and examined it as if with deep interest.

** Where? You mean to the beach — from town?"
She looked puzzled, scarcely annoyed. "How did you
know ?"

"I was called out of town yesterday," he said. "And
I wanted to see you to-day. So I telephoned; Mrs.
Hassard answered. And she told me, and I came
down."

"Well, all right," said Hope. "Don't you think it
must be dinner time? I shall have to be careful what
I tell Mrs. Hassard — silly old goop. Hiyu cultus
wawa — she talks too much."

So she dismissed the subject, rising with a dainty
yawn and lifting her arms above her head with a fine
classic gesture to pin up her hair. Carter sat still a
moment merely to watch her; she was so slim and
straight, not too thin as he had at first thought, but
what the French call fausse maigre. He had to recant
his opinion that she was not pretty if she chose; or
if it were true, then it did not matter.

They strolled back to the hotel and dined, suffi-
ciently if not luxuriously, on the veranda. Moths flut-
tered round the lamp, which was hardly needed. The
sun had gone down, its lingering fires in the west dy-
ing slowly. There was no moon. The air remained
soft, and yet had a salty tang.

"Listen to the waves," said Hope, leaning her chin

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 233

on her hands and leaving her coflfee neglected. "I
am going down to talk to them. They've just been
to Europe."

He insisted on taking all the available wraps, and
followed her. It was an odd fancy, but the sound of
her walking over the grass gave him pleasure. The
dark was settling down, and the tide was coming in
again, murmurously musical; the soft swish of her
feet and the edge of her gown seemed an overtone of
a great muted symphony.

They shared his tweed topcoat, spread on the ground,
and she was silent, her chin on her hands again, her
profile palely indistinct, looking out to sea, where was
nothing visible. At last she moved, put down her hand.
Hardly conscious of his own action, he laid his over it.

"I told you " she began, her voice uncertain, soft,

the voice one might expect from that little indistinct
white face which was yet warm to his gaze. "This is
silly."

"You said — we should be."

"No; I didn't mean — What did you say?"

"I don't know," he said quietly, as if it were just
then out of his power to interrogate himself, retrace
time and recall what had been.

"Friends," she said, as if she were questioning some-
thing, not themselves. And again, as he did not an-
swer, and she felt herself swayed by some invisible
force and there pressed on her heart the knowledge
that to take her hand from his would destroy the
strange beauty of the night and mar the rhythm of the'
little lapping waves and cover her with loneliness and
the dark, she cried out softly, "You were talking non-
sense— and this is foolishness!"

"No," he said. "I wasn't — I will do anything you
say."

But he put his arms about her, not closely, but so

234 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

that she was aware of their restrained strength. She
remembered the smooth, powerful play of his shoul-
ders, how the muscles rippled and flexed under her
hand, when he swam in with her. And the stark reality
of him, the sense of him as flesh and blood instead
of the sublimated figure out of an old tale that she
had loved in Tony Yorke, took her breath away. She
was no longer safe behind the veil of her own illu-
sions, a Princess of the Glass Tower, ardent only in
imagination, cold to her lover's lips. Seeing Nick
human, she must needs see herself also in the same
case; and she knew that if she would make the ven-
ture, as she had that afternoon, she had no just right
to look to him for help. Even if he were stronger, and
why should he be ? For the tide had them again ; she
felt it; it drew her again with that implacable, ir-
resistible ease. The waves were sharply sweet, closing
over her head, as they reached hands to one another
and felt the flood engulf them. Whether they kissed
or not, they hardly knew.

"Ah, no, no," she cried again, but it was herself she
spoke to, close against his shoulder. *T am sorry —
what did we say?"

The word was magic to unlock his clasp.

"Don't be sorry — my fault — Fll go now." So much
she heard, and without his touching her, she could
feel him call on all his healthy young strength, gather-
ing himself up tensely to breast the tide again. He
would go away, if she said he must ; if she would send
him away.

For the space of a heart beat, her brain was clear
as crystal, and she saw the forfeit, and the gain, as
if they had been held in either hand. Nothing im-
palpable, remote, no stuff of dreams, but the common-
place essentials of life from day to day, were in the
balance now. Would she put in pawn the countenance

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 235

of the world, order, freedom of all small things, for
this? The blood flowed hotly to her heart. The pru-
dence that would draw back and bargain now, when she
had been so lavish for the tinsel imitation, struck her
as contemptible. For she knew she had found her
unknown good.

**Oh-h-h," she said, the word spilling into a little
laugh, ''what does it matter what we said ? I forget."
She held out both her hands to him, and to life, seiz-
ing her immortal moment without fear.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE Chinese have a naive way of calling their
children by some derogatory nickname, during
their tender years, thus pretending before the
gods that the treasure of their hearts lies elsewhere.
We laugh at this, but sometimes imitate it.

Hope, her head bent over her drawing-board, ap-
peared to be entirely absorbed in her work. If she
admitted any extraneous thought, it was for other
material affairs. She did not feel well. She had got
a chill from her belated swim. She hated rising in
the morning, and came home with unspeakable relief.
She felt very cold all day, and now a burning languor
possessed her. But the day's work must be finished.
A natural tenacity and single-mindedness, which
amounted almost to stupidity, helped her to concen-
trate. There was nothing in her attitude that indicated
she might be waiting for anything or anyone.

Yet, when the door-bell rang, she sprang up in-
stantly, and went rather unsteadily but quickly down
the hall. Mrs. Hassard was out. Hope opened the
door, and then leaned against the wall. Nick noticed
that first.

"What's the matter, dear?" he asked. "Are you
sick?"

"Tired," she said, watching him with that curious
tentative look he had come to know. He glanced down
the hall first, and then without words picked her up
and carried her back to her room with the greatest
ease. As if that served instead to tell her what she
sought to know, she broke into laughter.
236

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 237

"Heap big Injun," she remarked approvingly. "For
a little man, that is."

"Ha," he said ferociously, "a little man, am I ? You
snippet — apologise!" He put her up on his shoulder
and she wound her fingers in his hair and drummed
on his chest with her heels. One of her shabby blue
satin slippers fell off.

"For a mejum-sized man," she amended meekly.
"Lemme down; I'm a sick woman." So he laid her
on the couch in a careful bundle, picked up the slipper,
and put it on with a kiss.

"All worn out," she said thoughtfully. "Look; my
toe is coming out of the other one." He struck an
operatic attitude, and sang, in a tragic barytone:

"My God, my God, your little feet are frozen!"

"What is that charming bit?" she inquired, mirth-
fully.

"Rodolphe's song — or is it Marcel's? Very free
translation. Never seen La Bohemef We must go
some time. To appreciate La Boheme, of course,
you've got to have lobster and champagne afterward ;
we'll do that too. Not to-night, no?"

"Please, nothing to-night," she said. "Let's be
devilish, and play seven-up for pennies. Nick, have
you got a lobster and champagne income?"

"No, dear, I haven't," he said candidly. "I have
only my paltry stipend from the Cornwall Motor
Works, and a rich uncle whose health is positively
irritating. But I have enough — more than enough
for one," he said hastily. "Hope, is there anything
— do you want "

She did not seem to hear him.

The Cornwall Motor Works made high-power en-
gines of all kinds, but chiefly marine engines of the
smaller types, for motor boats and such craft. Nick
sold them, or demonstrated them, or did whatever was

238 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

required of him. Sometimes he drove in motor-boat
or motor-car races, but only incidentally. (It always
made Grace very angry.) He was well liked ; he knew
himself marked for promotion if he worked for it;
and lately, without explaining to himself just why,
he had worked for it. He liked machinery; he liked
anything that would go.

"Won't you hand me my drawing things, and a cush-
ion ; I have a little bit of work to do," said Hope.

**I hate to see you work when you're sick," he said
gloomily, doing her bidding.

"Well," she said with assumed carelessness, "you
won't, for a week or two. I am to have a rest, the
doctor told me. And I told my editor."

"The doctor?" He pounced on the word. "You
are ill. What else did he say?"

"Nothing else. I've got a low fever; I knew that
anyway; and nerves. Don't look so horrified; it's
about equivalent to chickenpox. Change of climate,
I daresay."

She was quite as much concerned about what her
editor had not said as over what the doctor did say.
He had been going out when she caught him, and had
borne her along with him, in his casual, friendly way,
saying he was meaning to confer with her about some-
thing. Whatever it was, he let it go by when she made
her plea for a brief respite, and, as the only expression
of sympathy he could think of, made her drink a
champagne cocktail and put her on the subway for
home. But she was sure he had been thinking her
work unsatisfactory; and equally sure that she had
not yet struck the right note. Kennard had not been
sorry to lay her off ; that was too plain. Something with
more "punch" in it; that was what they all wanted;
Heaven alone knew what the imbecile phrase meant,
and she would have to find out. No doubt it could be

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 239

done, but the immediate prospect was not comfort-
ing. Her mind was as sluggish as her limbs ; it refused
to be spurred to fresh efforts, or even to keep the old
pace.

"You stay in bed," Nick commanded, "till you're
perfectly well."

"And let the ravens feed me ?" she inquired.

"Certainly; I've got a herd of trained ravens," he
said. "Look here, Hope, have you got plenty of
money?" He spoke very fast.

"Yes," she said cheerfully, "lots." She made a men-
tal reckoning; she could afford to stop work for what
seemed a long time, in prospect ; ample time to recover
in.

"I hate to see you sick," he said again, with some
indignation at the powers that be.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said absently. "Not for a
few days; it's rather luxurious." She was thinking
that the respite should enable her to coax back her
inventiveness, to formulate new ideas. "I'm sure that
under more favourable circumstances I should be a
confirmed malade imaginaire. But don't let me be a
nuisance to you."

He caught up her hands and held them against his
heart.

"Don't," he said. "Don't laugh at me. I— love
you."

When he said that, her laughter went quickly
enough. She was afraid to hear it. She was afraid
of vows, of all the spoken ritual, the winged words
that return as arrows from the bow of wrath when the
cord of faith is loosed. Therefore, inconsistently, she
had made a vow to let each day be sufficient unto
itself. Her sense of humour must have been dormant
just then. It should have reminded her that of the
three parties concerned, only one had said anything at

240 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

all about this preposterous contract, and that one her-
self. Dealing with the devil in the middle ages was
more comfortable than making terms to-day with the
Great Unknowable ; one could get security or acknowl-
edgment occasionally.

But what he was vaguely afraid of was that she
was going to get away from him. She had run away
once, from the beach hotel. And she did not seem able
to explain why. That was simple enough, too. She
thought he might be sorry again, or that he would
expect her to be nursing regret. If she had laughed
at him a little afterward, that was not surprising. He
had fallen into such hopeless confusion on finding her
again in town. Any human woman would have laughed
at .him. Besides, it helped her to her own balance.
But now, when he waited exposed to her shafts, the
tears came in her eyes too, and she drew his head down
into her arms, with a soft crooning sound. They whis-
pered, in the immortal "little language" of lovers, until
Hope recalled herself to duty.

"Now," she remarked patiently, "you will please get
my pad. And a cushion. And my pencil. Thanks.
You may go on talking, if you won't expect me to
listen. Or do you want to read a book?"

"Grace is in town," he answered irrelevantly. "Will
you be well enough to come to lunch, or tea, or some-
thing, this week, and meet her? As soon as you're
better, I should like you to. I must go and see her."

"Humph!" said Hope. "Oh, yes, any time. Well,
why don't you go and see her?"

"I will to-morrow." Somehow he felt a premoni-
tion that Grace would scold him. "I'll tell her to be
ready for an exclusive little party."

"Exclusive little party," repeated Hope mechanically.
"Oh, shut up, Nick. How can I work? Yes, I know

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 241

I told you to go on talking, but you shouldn't pay any
attention to me."

*1 won't," he said. "I'll talk all I want to." Hav-
ing thus declared his independence, he was silent,
glancing at Hope surreptitiously from time to time, as
if he feared his thoughts might be overheard. He
had matter for thought.

Her small but extremely capable looking hands held
his gaze. They were so sure and quick.

"Hope," he said at last, "where is your wedding
ring?"

"I threw it away," she said briefly, without looking
up.

"Did you feel like that ?" he asked.

She nodded.

He did not speak again for a long time. Did she
still feel like that?

When she finished her drawing, they did play cards,
but at ten o'clock she declared she coufd sit up no
longer and sent him away. First she rubbed out two
creases on his forehead, but they came back as soon
as he was out of her sight. She heard him speaking
to Mrs. Hassard for a time, though their words were
indistinguishable. Very wearily and slowly she crept
into bed. The thought of going out in the morning for
breakfast was wearisome.

It was no more cheerful to contemplate when morn-
ing came and she waked from a long heavy feverish
sleep. So she lay still, watching the shadow shift on
the blind. She was not in the least hungry. Why not
wait for lunch? Someone knocked.

"Here's your breakfast," said Mrs. Hassard. "And
Mr. Carter said to tell you not to go out to-day, and
he'll come up and see about your dinner."

"What?" said Hope stupidly. Mrs. Hassard re-
peated her remarks in a matter of fact tone. Hope

242 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

blinked, and tried to think. Nick and dinner appeared
with evening. She was dressed; she meant to scold
him, but forgot. Her head was heavy, and it was so
delightful to have him. He made her feel comfort-
able. She tried to remember that this would not last.
She was in love; and she knew the end of that, by
experience. She did not want to depend on him, not
even for happiness. But it did not seem to matter.
Only by and bye she managed to ask :

"What do you suppose Mrs. Hassard thinks?"
It was not that she cared for anyone's opinion for
itself, but she was in Mrs. Hassard's house. Nick only
remarked soothingly :

"I wouldn't worry about that; I talked to her."
He added to himself : "Mrs. Hassard won't think at
all, as long as she gets paid promptly."

CHAPTER XXIV

AND it was true that so far as it could be avoided,
Mrs. Hassard did not think. She had been a
New York landlady a long, long time. The
world was not as she would have it, perhaps, but then
she had not made it, and must accept the best terms
she could get from it. What milk of human kindness
had not dried in her long since in the arid wastes of
"furnished rooms" went out to Hope when she per-
ceived her lodger was really ill. But this was prob-
ably because no active exercise of benevolence was re-
quired of her. Nick took it off her hands, and Mrs.
Hassard was glad to let him do it. And Hope did
not look very ill. Mrs. Hassard thought her lucky.
She could get about most of the time, when her fever
was at the ebb. When it burned up higher, the flush
it lent her concealed her growing thinness. She spent
most of her time lying, banked up with pillows, on
her meagre couch, with a rug over her feet, her eyes
half closed, her thoughts shuttling between her old
day dreams and flickering visions of an equally fan-
tastic future. Sometimes she would doze, and wake
again feeling hot and oppressed, with a reminiscent
touch of dread, as if some black pit had opened at her
feet in a dream. She had time enough to weigh her
affairs, perhaps to be sorry; but she did neither at
first. Perhaps the fever would not permit her to think
coldly, though none of her fancies even verged on
delirium; it was only her old inconsequence and im-
practicality of mind. So one day after another went
by, in a curious timeless manner. She dieted on milk
243

244 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

because it saved the trouble of eating; she pretended
to read sometimes, and would close the book in the
middle of a sentence. And every few days she would
steal out of doors, and come back weakly, with a de-
feated look, unable to face the cold and the barren
inhospitable streets.

After awhile, though the lassitude grew on her, her
mind began to struggle with it, in the manner of one
gagged and bound when freedom is an immediate
necessity. Being ill was a kind of release from a
troublesome world, at first. It grew to be an impris-
onment.

She had never been ill, or at least not helpless, in her
life. It appeared to her in the light of a cowardly
stratagem, robbing her of her legitimate weapons.
Life had no conception of immediate justice, so far
as she could see; it might be immeasurably cruel, or
boundlessly generous, but always unfair from the
standpoint of to-day. She had said in her heart that
she could do without the world, without anyone or any-
thing; in the end, of course, she expected to do with-
out love too, and therefore without Nick. This was
as if some mocking power should hold her and say,
"Yes, but first taste and see if you like the brew." It
is easier to reject the world than to have it reject
oneself. She wanted her work, anyway ! And where
was her independence of Nick, and of to-morrow?
She could not walk, and he carried her in his arms,
metaphorically; as he had done literally. So her
thoughts fretted about in a circle.

And as the days stretched into weeks, and the New
Year came and went, the oppression that haunted her
in dreams translated itself into a very prosaic fact that
stayed with her during the daylight hours. Her posi-
tion could not be kept open for her indefinitely ; it was
probably already filled. She did not wish to inquire,

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 245

knowing herself still unequal to the resumption of its
duties. Her money was dwindling very rapidly.

"Time is a great solvent," she remembered Mary
saying. She must, must hold out; she must get well.
"H a person could hold her breath long enough," she
reflected, almost amused, "she need never drown.
That's what I have to do."

But Nick could not see any of this. He brought a
supply of cheerfulness, like a gust of summer air,
with him each evening; and it lasted as long as he
stayed. His entry was the event of her day. She
knew his step, and the very way he turned the door-
knob. And he too could see, before the door opened,
the turn of her head, the lift of her languid eyelids,
and her hands outstretched in greeting. Then she
would look so bright and gay, he was half deceived
into forgetting that it was fever lent the lustre to her
eyes and the colour to her cheeks. That gaiety was
what shut his lips on the one thing he most wanted to
say to her.

She seemed so perfectly satisfied with things as they
were! It was largely a tribute to his own vitality.
There are people who by their bearing and outlook
give pleasure to the beholder as unconsciously as a
wild animal, or a tree in leaf, or any other plastic form
of nature. While he was with her she lived his life;
he was her eyes, her ears, her world. If he could have
glimpsed her when she was alone, fretting a pencil
with her weak fingers, knitting her brow in baffled
weariness over some unfinished piece of work, a gust
of protective pity would have swept away his uncer-
tainty.

It was not that he minded eating his words. But her
calmness seemed uncanny. He had always been sure
that women were somehow "different," intrinsically.
He thought, like many men, that the edicts of civilisa-

246 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

tion, the forms of morality, were based on the inner
requirements of women alone. That women insisted
on that system for its own sake, and loved the letter
of the law fanatically. He did not realise that if a
bow is bent too far it breaks, and civilisation produces
its anarchs as surely as solitude. In short, people must
live. That explained poor Hope ; she would live. Ac-
tion, even unto violence, was necessary to her. Besides,
she had bargained with Fate to be content ; and she had
bargained with her own pride to seem content. But
how was he to know that ? Men admit their own mor-
tality, their human weakness, but they want women
to be minor goddesses, who can be what they will be.
What a woman does is her own fault, or her own
choice. So it is, if life is to have any meaning; but
one must consider what alternative is offered. She
may be only doing the best she can, with great bewil-
derment.

So he hesitated, failing to find the right word and
the right moment.

The equal unreason and omniscience of his goddesses
were made plainer to him by Grace. Grace had come
back to town just a little too late for his "exclusive
party," and gone away again. She oscillated between
New York and Philadelphia throughout the winter.
Now she was back again. Her temper was not im-
proved, and she spared him none of it. She acted,
in short, as if the sight of him exasperated her almost
beyond endurance, and at the same time she insisted
on his attendance. Her insistence did her little good.
Nick did not mind her candid recitals of his short-
comings, but he had not time to listen. Hope got all
his spare time, and he was becoming really anxious
about her. He could see her going downhill, getting
weaker and thinner daily, though she denied both
facts. Rather fatuously, he was thinking that if Grace

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 247

only knew, she would sympathise with his anxiety.

"Certainly what ?" Grace's voice came to him acidly.
"I don't really mind your not listening, Nick; but
please don't interrupt the thread of my thoughts with
such utterly inept remarks."

"Did I say 'certainly'?" he asked guiltily. "What
should I have said ? I only meant that I agree with you ;
you've got twice as much sense as I have, Grace."

"Do you consider that a compliment ?" she inquired,
unmollified. "Now have you the least idea what I
was talking about?"

He threw himself on her mercy.

"Not the least," he said shamelessly. "Be a dear,
and tell me. I've got such a lot on my mind."

"Oh, go away," she cried. "Go to — whoever does
interest you." He took his hat obediently, and she
said, "Sit down. If you want my drawing-room to
meditate in, you are quite welcome. But as I haven't
seen you for weeks, I thought you might care to talk
awhile."

"I do," he said, propitiatively. "You haven't told me
yet what's going on in Philadelphia."

"I've been trying to for the last half-hour," she said.
"What have you been doing ?"

"Why, nothing much," he replied doubtfully. "Just
dubbing along, I suppose."

"You might tell me," she veered suddenly to a pretty
coaxing tone. "Is it a scrape? You have got some-
thing on your mind. Nick — you're in love!"

"Me?" He looked at her with seeming candour.
Should he tell her ? Couldn't she help him ? A woman
might persuade Hope to let herself be taken out of
town, perhaps to go South! But Grace would nat-
urally want to know everything. He couldn't, until
Hope was able to speak for herself. "No, I'll tell you
what I was thinking of. I've got an offer, from the

248 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

Rutherford people, to go to Chicago. It might mean
something big for me ; and then again, I'm doing pretty
well with the Cornwall. I can't make up my mind,
that's all. Now if you can decide that for me "

She was watching him, sidelong, with a veiled, in-
tense scrutiny. He was telling the truth, which al-
ways makes matters a great deal more difficult. She
had to confess herself at a loss, and he departed as
soon as he decently could. He had not seen Hope for
nearly a day. The subway did not go fast enough. He
pictured her lying there asleep over her book, waking to
smile at him.

That was a mistake, but even lovers cannot be clair-
voyant. Hope went out that afternoon, though it was
a labour of Hercules to attire herself for the street
She nearly tumbled over her nose, she told him after-
ward, in the simple process of buttoning her gaiters. A
veil was quite beyond her strength. And then the ele-
vator was not running, as so often happened. It took
her ten minutes to creep downstairs.

The editor she sought was out. She had hoped for
something from that visit; she had studied the pref-
erences of his periodical two weeks in advance. A
fresh wave of weariness and dejection swept over her;
she sank back into her chair in the waiting-room. No,
she could not go further that day. But on the way
home she might adopt a temporary expedient. When
she got home, she would write to Mary.

Edgerton's bracelet brought less than she expected,
being unused to the ways and rates of pawnbrokers.
So she took off her little amethyst necklet and put that
in. Then she held onto the edge of the counter while
the money was being paid over.

The stairs stretched before her once more. They
looked higher than the Rockies. But, after sitting on
the lowest step a long time, she essayed them. If the

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 249

building had boasted a hall-porter, she would have
asked help. It was an old building, and had no such
luxury. The elevator boy was taking an opportune
holiday.

One flight. She paused for breath, put out her hand
to steady against the wall, and it treacherously failed
her. Afterwards she fancied she had not found
strength to cry out, and merely fell, in a resigned sort
of way, to the bottom again, like the problematic frog
in the hypothetical well. And by the time she reached
the bottom she knew nothing.

It was less than ten minutes before Nick came and
found her. He lifted her in his arms and ran all the
way up the three flights. She was so very light. His
heart seemed to be stopped while he was doing it, and
if she were dead, he felt sure it would never start
again.

"Did I break my neck?" was her first preposterous
question, reviving just as he laid her down.

Mrs. Hassard, hovering distractedly on the verge of
things, gave vent to a half hysterical giggle, and Nick
choked and hid his face against Hope's hair. She tried
to pat his head comfortingly, and gave a little squeak
of pain.

"Where does it hurt?" Nick asked, and slipped his
fingers gently along her arm.

"Up here." She tried to move her chin to indicate
the point of difficulty. "What's up there — my collar-
bone ?" He unfastened her collar, and found the pale
red bruise, already slightly swollen. Mrs. Hassard
had telephoned for a doctor.

It was her collar-bone, the doctor said — broken. No,
not her arm; that was only very badly wrenched.
Nothing else much but a few contusions ; bad ones, yes,
but bruises couldn't kill.

So, by and by, trussed like a chicken, she lay flat on

250 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

her back and listened to a lecture. The doctor sat tak-
ing her pulse and scowling at her benevolently. He
was an old man, who considered patients a lot of re-
fractory and interesting children.

"Nerves ? Fever ?" he said accusingly. "Yes ! Ha !
And what have you been doing for them? / know —
worrying! And galloping about the city like a luna-
tic on a day like this." She tried to explain that gal-
loping was not an accurate description of her gait,
but he listened not at all. "Let me tell you one thing,
young lady; you may have done the best thing for
yourself, though it's not a method I'd recommend gen-
erally. You'll keep quiet now. Yes, if we have to
get a strait jacket. And you'll probably get well in
consequence." He rose and seized his instrument
case. "Stop worrying!" he barked suddenly, turning
at the door. "I'll drop in to-morrow." He vanished.

"Nice old man," said Hope. "Well, unless the
house bums down, there's not much left to worry
about. Everything's happened."

But Nick was looking at her queerly. Mrs. Has-
sard had taken herself off.

"Will you really stop worrying?" he said, in a low
voice. "And leave everything to me till you are bet-
ter— everything ?"

She was filled with aches and pains and fatigue, and
she leaned back on him mentally, at last, as on a pil-
low.

"Yes," she assented. "How long am I to be getting
well?"

"Only a few days," he said mendaciously. "Now,
I've broken orders. You were not to talk, to drink
this, and to go to sleep immediately."

She drank something faintly bitter and pungent,
and he sat covering her hand with his. After awhile

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 251

she felt pain and happiness alike slipping out of her
weak grasp as consciousness faded, and so she slept.

Waking to entire helplessness is a strange sensation.
It lends itself to speculation, to odd twists of thought
and feeling, and philosophical, resigned meditation.
Hope wanted a drink, but she could not reach for
one, and the day seemed very young, so she did not
wish to call.

"I must think of something else," she told herself.
"I wonder what it means that I am here — like this —
now? Is there any sense in it? Why do nice things
seem sensible and disagreeable ones stupid? They
are both the outcome of the logic of events. Where
am I getting to? Well, where am I, anyway? I can
think about Seattle. Is my mind in Seattle, or is
Seattle in my mind ? So where am I ? Isn't my mind
me? What is me? My hand, there; if it is me, why
can't I lift it and wave it around ? It just won't ; and
it's absurd to say that I could disobey myself. There's

a catch in logic there Come in. Nick, how did

you get here so early?"

It was Nick ; he had tea and toast and other things,
yet he failed to look ridiculous.

*T stayed here," he explained briefly. Then he fed
her with a spoon, and smoothed her pillows in the ap-
proved manner of nurses. She did not seem to ob-
ject.

**How do you feel?" he asked inevitably.

"Not very much," she said. "I'm trying thought
suggestion on me, but I find it doesn't extend to the
bandages; they remain perfectly immoveable. I am a
child of light," she recited solemnly. "Pain does not
exist; there is no evil, nor no stairs, and especially no

elevator; I do not exist myself " She burst out

laughing, and he put down the plate he was holding

252 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

and slipped his arm under her head cautiously, kneel-
ing beside the cot.

"You sweet," he said huskily, "won't you laugh
again? Hope, your hair smells like flowers."

"My collar-bone smells like arnica," she said, and
saw with surprise that he was nodding with sleep.
He was white and haggard. "Nick! What is the
matter ?"

"Nothing." He was very alert again. "Only I

didn't sleep last night. I was thinking Hope,

you can't move now; I've got you; I'm going to keep
you if I can. Will you marry me?"

He had said it at last.

"What?" she said faintly. "Like this — all in pieces
and tied together again, useless and ugly. Besides,
you don't want to marry anyone."

"Anyone but you," he corrected her firmly. "I was
afraid you'd remember that fool break. Can't you
forget it? You're the loveliest thing in the world,
and I can't do without you. You will, say you will,
sweetheart; you're not tired of me, are you?"

"Oh," she said brokenly, confronted at last with the
real logic of events, the punishment of the unthinking,
which she had once truly acknowledged as the most
severe of punishments. "Oh, Nick — I can't!" And,
as he was silent in sick astonishment, she went on
stumblingly: "I made you believe a lie. Because I
didn't want to talk about it. My husband isn't dead
— or anything. It's three years since I saw him. I
was such a fool, too."

"But you don't — you don't care for him?"

"No-no !"

"Would you marry me if you could?" He was
wondering if he might rescind that refusal to the
Rutherford people. He had refused on Hope's ac-
count. Now he wanted to accept for the same reason.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 253

"Yes," she said hesitantly. "I never thought of it
before; we said "

"As if that mattered!" He smoothed her hair.
"Don't you care; it will be all right. I can see what
we must do."

CHAPTER XXV

WHAT do you want me to do ?" she asked sub-
missively. So do good resolutions and bad
end alike.

"I have an offer to go to Chicago, You shall go,
too. We'll have to wait a year, but it would be three
years here. A year isn't very long, if I can be near
you. You can get a divorce there. You don't care
for him?" he insisted.

"I never did. No, you just can't understand. It
was an insane mood — like committing suicide." To
her relief he seemed to comprehend. "I can't give a
real reason," she pleaded. "Didn't you ever do any-
thing that had just no sense in it at all? That you
couldn't even make up a good reason for afterward?
Oh, did you really?"

"Often," he said thoughtfully. "Small things ; they
might just as well have been big ones."

"Because sometimes nothing seems to matter; there
are no valid reasons for anything. I will never do
things like that again — not now."

"No, not now," he agreed, and kissed her. "You
will come?"

"Of course," she said. And though she was begin-
ning to feel faint again, and wanted to shut her eyes
and sleep, she murmured first: "After all, you have
to work for love, the same as anything else. I don't
mind. But did you always know that? I believe I
thought it was something you could acquire suddenly,
like a piece of jewelry, perhaps. And then you just
had it. But it isn't."

954

THE MAGPIE'S NEST , 255

"No, it isn't like anything else," he agreed again.

The doctor was quite right. Compelled to quietude,
Hope felt her tense nerves slowly relaxing, day by
day, and the sluggish fever in her veins subsiding. It
was slow, for she had the destruction of years to re-
build, and nothing but Nick to help her. Long, dream-
ily monotonous hours, that resolved themselves into
days, days that joined the steady squadrons of weeks,
filed by; her fancy seemed to see them passing her
door, always outside, for in that high-ceiled narrow
room time came to a backwater and ceased. The city
whirled and roared about it, filtering in a grumbling
sullen noise through the window from which was visi-
ble only a high and hideous brownstone wall across
the street. In all that seething life she had no part,
and was forgotten of it.

Nothing short of the enthusiasm that Nick brought
into it could have made that room endurable so long.
It was a terrible room, high and angular, with brown
walls and carpets and melancholy tall windows. All
the furniture in it looked accidental and fragmentary;
no furniture could have suited it. It was bleak; it
glared sombrely. Always it was either too hot or too
cold. But they used it as a temporary storehouse for
dreams, and it served well enough.

It was a month before Hope could go out at all,
and then she found herself too uncertain on her feet,
so easily fatigued, she had to take her exercise cau-
tiously, in graduated doses. Picking up her drawing
again presented unexpected difficulties. Her unused
fingers and mistreated arm were singularly clumsy.

**My muscles feel like pulp," she said disgustedly.
"And I simply must get into trim soon. I wonder if
if I could get my job back?"

"You aren't fit to work yet," said Nick. "And —
aren't you going to Chicago ?"

256 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Why, yes ; when you are ready. But in the mean-
time ?"

"There ain't going to be no meantime. I'm only
waiting till you're fit. And I want to have a few days
off, first, and take you out of town. Now, will you
be a good girl till the first fine weather, so we can go
down to the shore?"

She said she would.

"When shall we have fine weather?" she asked
wistfully.

"Oh, soon— in April."

And he took her for a careful pilgrimage of a few
blocks, and afterward to tea, because he saw she was
feeling restless. It was not so cold just then, for the
end of February. Hope realised that this was no such
rigorous climate as she had been bred to. There was
just enough frost to crisp the air. It was dusk when
they returned, by way of Riverside Drive. Leaving it
gave them one of those lovely vignettes sometimes to
be seen momentarily framed in a cross street that
looks to the river. A slender tree, the delicate twigs
etching with black the faintly suffused western sky,
on one side; the other straightly framed by a wall;
and a street lamp hanging in the branches like some
marvellous fruit, a globe of the palest frosty violet
light. The distant Palisades balanced the picture with
their solid masses. Whistler might have painted it.

"What a lot of lovely things there are in the world,"
remarked Hope, gazing.

"Yes, and you shall have all of them," said Nick
fatuously, not following her thought.

She pinched his arm and laughed, and he felt a
shock of pleasure, as if he had just discovered that
she was near.

"You'll bring that home in a basket, I suppose," she
said, indicating the view. "But I do wonder why,

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 257

when there is so much raw material for it, we don't
have more beauty in life? Are we too lazy? I'm
sure some people never know what beauty means.
Their faces are so dull and mean, or simply vacant.
Or is it my fault that I don't get under their sur-
faces and discover their sensibilities? A real artist
would, I suppose. Why does Mrs. Hassard bore me
so? Am I not intelligent enough to find anything in-
teresting in her. And the new lodger; have you seen
him? I hate his face, don't you? Yet I don't know
anything about him."

"I could live without him," admitted Nick. "Hol-
ton, you mean ?" But Hope, characteristically, did not
know his name. She had passed him in the hall and
noted that he had fishy, impertinent eyes; she knew
no more about him. "Looks like a bad lot," Nick said.
"I think I've seen his kind before." There are many
"kinds" in any great city — spawn of the strange
deeps of piled humanity. Nick knew all he wanted
to about them; they made him rather sick. So he
seldom thought of them. He was very like the rest
of us.

They went out for a short time every day now, in
all weathers, as Hope's strength increased. And in the
mornings she strove to recapture her skill with the
pencil, such as it had been. She used to amuse Nick
with impromptu sketches, and introduced the Moon
Babies to him. Sometimes he found them in his pock-
ets, in the lining of his hat, in all sorts of unlikely
places, on little homemade Valentine affairs that would
always flutter out at just the wrong moment.

She even went downtown surreptitiously again,
once or twice, again in pursuit of art editors. Some
of the newspapers were kind enough to ask her to call
again later, but that was all. She felt reluctant about

258 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

going to Kennard. Persistence was all she needed, she
felt sure.

Then suddenly it was April, and the looked- for fine
weather came, and Nick said they need wait no longer.
They would find no flowers nor burgeoned trees, nor
any of the luxuriance of summer, but the snow had
passed, and they could look again on the sea, even if
they could not dip in it. He had a sneaking romantic
wish to take her again to the sea.

So they went out of town with immense relief, say-
ing good-bye to Mrs. Hassard with ill-concealed en-
thusiasm. They never expected to see her again.
Hope packed all her belongings. They would return
to New York just long enough for Nick to gather up
a few loose ends of his affairs. Then Chicago, a
smoky Paradise, invited them. Hope faced the pros-
pect with equanimity. She could get work there eas-
ily enough, no doubt ; it was large enough for all prac-
tical purposes.

So she gave up the thought of New York, though
she confessed to Nick she wished she had won its
favour, forced some recognition from its enormous in-
difference. There was still that glitter and allure
about it. It did look like a treasure box. He prom-
ished rashly that they should return some day and loot
it, even unto repletion. He felt serenely confident.
So do the children of Naples, under the shadow of
Vesuvius. He could not even see Vesuvius.

Yet he should have known they were living on suf-
ferance. Perhaps he did, dimly, the next day. Hope
did not realise anything just at the time. It has been
said that she was rather stupid, especially in the ways
of the world. Especially she did not realise how ut-
terly her original resolve had gone by the board. She
had vowed to leave men out of her life; to take her
happiness by the day; to build nothing on promises.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 259

And just then there was nothing at all in her life but
one man ; and she was going to follow him to the end
of the world — or Chicago, anyway — on nothing but a
promise. An observant man, looking at her mouth
and eyes, would have known she was born for nothing
else.

They went to a very commonplace summer resort,
sparsely populated because the season had not begun,
its beaches pleasantly free of humanity; the hotels in
a semi-comatose condition, hibernating, with the pulse
of activity running low. Coming late for lunch, they
were almost alone in the dining-room. Then they
walked up the beach a little way, and it was theirs.
They ran races on the sand; they sat in the pale sun-
light and built sand castles, and filled them with sea-
shell treasure. And they went back to their hotel
agreeably hungry.

Pausing at the bend of the staircase, going to her
room to freshen herself for dinner, Hope idly noticed
a man at the desk, with his back to her, poring over
the register.

''Looks familiar, somehow," she commented frag-
mentarily, and as Nick turned she nodded over her
shoulder. "Down there, the man in the brown hat."
Nick looked hard, but Hope went on, and did not
observe his apprehensive frown. Nor, after dinner,
did she note that the man in the brown hat walked
behind them from the dining-room, and spoke to Nick
while he bought a cigar. Afterward, in the lounge, it
meant nothing that Nick excused himself to go in
search of some particular evening paper.

He was gone for ten minutes, when it occurred to
her to go upstairs for a forgotten handkerchief, in-
stead of waiting where she had been put.

Through the open transom of Nick's room, which
adjoined her own, his voice was distinctly audible.

26o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

And he spoke angrily, though not loudly; she failed
to catch an intelligible sentence. But she heard her
own name; she was sure of that. A man's voice an-
swered him. Nick cut him off short. She stood
blankly wondering and listening, so the door opened
in her face. Nick opened it, with a gesture of usher-
ing out his companion, though not at all politely. His
eyes were very angry indeed, a cold blue in his flushed,
set face.

"Hope!" he exclaimed. Then his hand fell on the
other man's shoulder — the man in the brown hat.
Hope recognised him now — the "bad lot" whose face
she had said she "hated"; their fellow-lodger at Mrs.
Hassard's. Hope started to speak, but could not think
of anything appropriate to say. The other also opened
his mouth, but prudently closed it again at the feel of
Nick's grip. "That will be absolutely all!" said Nick.
"You'd better go quick." The other was a small man,
with a furtive, narrow face. He showed his teeth un-
pleasantly as he twisted away, and looked back once
while hastening down the hall.

Hope stood staring, until Nick took her hands and
drew her through the door. Then she got a belated
sense of shock, for Nick was trembling. It frightened
her unaccountably; she threw herself into his arms
with an answering shudder.

"What was the matter ? What were you quarrelling
about? What did he want?" she asked breathlessly.

"Nothing, dear; we weren't quarrelling." But she
took him by the shoulders peremptorily, and he red-
dened again. "At least, I suppose we were," he said,
patting her shoulder soothingly. "Just a man's row;
I was rude to him, and he didn't like it, so I told him
to get out."

"But you were talking about me," she said slowly.

"No," said Nick explosively.

i

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 261

"Oh, I heard you!"

He blushed, he stammered miserably, then he caught
her hands again pleadingly.

"Look here, Hope, we weren't talking about youj
that's just it. That fellow saw us here and tried to
force himself on us for the evening; I shunted him
off, as I told you; that was when he mentioned you,
and I told him to shut up and get out. It was just —
just a stupid misunderstanding. The man was a fool,
that's all." Poor Nick really did not know what he
was saying; he had to satisfy her somehow, and he
thought the truth might be alarming to her inexperi-
ence. She thought she understood. Evidently the
man had insulted her, but no good could come of re-
senting it further. He should have let it rest at that,
but he blundered on : "I'll tell you all about it some
other time, if you insist ; when we get to Chicago. I'm
too angry now." He took her pensive look for disbe-
lief. He looked so unhappy and upset over it, she
flung her arms about his neck again, closing the inci-
dent. Nevertheless, he had said too much and looked
too much. It was quite involuntarily that she asked
him later in the evening irrelevantly :

"Wasn't it queer that he happened to be here?"

"Awfully queer," said Nick, and flushed again.

It had shaken his debonair sense of security. There
was a hint of the world's hostility toward the indi-
vidual as such in the affair, the meaningless cruelty of
an ordered scheme of things toward all things not or-
derly. He did not like to think he had put Hope in
the position of an outlaw. He wished profoundly
that their year was passed. But he had spared her the
same uneasiness.

What he had spared her would hardly have trou-
bled her at all. She was seldom daunted by the things
she understood, however inimical. Knowing the

262 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

worst, she could contemplate it with equanimity. Hope
was just the kind of person to make a good breakfast
before facing a firing squad. But — she was a trifle
afraid of the dark. A common, rather cowardly
blackmailer, who had been scared off at that, was
nothing.

It was the dark she faced instead, when, a week
later, she sat alone in New York, waiting for Nick,
who did not come. Not knowing the meaning of
either happening, she inevitably associated the two in
her mind. It grew to some terrible, unknown menace,
connected with herself. Together they overwhelmed
her.

CHAPTER XXVI

THERE is hardly a worse torment than waiting
in absolute uncertainty, counting the hours and
the minutes, running the gamut of indignation
and anxious hope and that gnawing grief which can-
not find relief in tears. It takes a certain hardihood
of soul to wear it out without giving way to utter
hysteria. Hope had known heavy and corroding hours
before, but then she had lost faith and could take coun-
sel of forgetfulness. Now came a period she never
afterwards cared to refer to: three days of mentally
sitting still with folded hands before a misfortune
whose face was shrouded. There was no way she
could turn for information; New York is a human
sea, which washes out a footprint almost sooner than
the maker is out of sight around a corner.

Nick had left her very gaily, saying he would be no
more than two or three hours, or until dinner-time.
He meant to go to his office and inform them of his
completed plans, to go to his bank and get what money
he needed, and if there was time to make a farewell
call upon his cousin. That he might, however, defer.
And with that he might have stepped off the earth,
so far as Hope was concerned.

She was at a small and quiet hotel downtown. By
the next morning she knew the pattern of her room's
wall-paper by heart, and at six o'clock was down, ask-
ing hopefully and fearfully for letters. There were
none. So till afternoon she stayed in her room again,
unable to read or sit still. Not till then could she feel
she might try to find him through whatever channels
263

264 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

her memory might point out. His office, naturally,
first.

There are times in every human life when bad luck
apparently ceases to be merely casual and becomes
malignant. The telephone operator at Nick's office
told Hope that he had left, very positively. Gone to
Chicago, she mentioned cheerfully, and rang off.

He certainly meant to leave, Hope cogitated miser-
ably. It might be that she had not understood him
aright, and he had really severed the connection be-
fore they went down to the sea. That avenue was
closed. She felt rather stunned, but resorted to the
telephone again, to see if any unconjecturable reason
could have taken him back to Mrs. Hassard's. That
was negatived in brief time. Who had he ever named
to her as intimate friends ? She fished some names out
of her mind, but nothing more; she could as soon find
himself as these merely heard-of individuals of un-
known address. He had a club. After the fashion of
clubs, it could or would tell her nothing. And she
began to feel beaten and a little shamed. Something
— some impalpable shade of a tone from whoever had
answered her at the club — had shown her the world's
view of what she was doing, a woman seeking a man
who evaded. She could almost taste her own scorn in
her throat; it choked her when she tried to speak.
Hadn't she vowed to take each day as sufficient unto
itself? But her heart spoke, thrusting pride aside.
Nick ought to have his chance — if anything had hap-
pened to him.

Now there remained no one, except, she remem-
bered, strangely only at the very last, his cousin.

Mrs. Stuyvesant — Studebaker? Sturtevant! Grace
Sturtevant. And she lived somewhere downtown —
Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth Street? The tele-
phone book showed a Mrs. Ralph Sturtevant in East

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 265

Nineteenth Street. Fully conscious of the unpardon-
able social solecism she was committing, but with every
other feeling suddenly lost again in that black anxiety
that was suffocating her, she went to the telephone
again.

"Who is speaking, please?" A servant's voice;
there is an unmistakable inflection in the tone of the
trained servitor.

"I should like to speak to Mrs. Sturtevant," repeated
Hope harshly.

There was silence a moment, then a voice, clear,
almost toneless, as if strained, and infinitely detached,
said:

"This is Mrs. Sturtevant. Who is there?"

"I am afraid you would not know my name," said
Hope, her throat dry. "But, if you would be so kind,
you might be able to do me a favour. Do you know
Mr. Norris Carter's present address?"

The merest ghost of a caught-up cry came back to
her — "Ah!" Silence again. And then, as even, as
toneless, perhaps more distant than before:

"I am sorry I cannot. He has sailed for Europe, I
believe. Is there anything else?" The last she might
have spared, but it is instinct to strike out when one
feels a blow, whencever it come.

"No. Thank you." Hope hung up the receiver.
Then, since she had no other thing in the world left,
she called on her pride to sustain her and went quietly
up to her room again, till her mind should be clear
enough to plan.

Her pride and — how much ? Mechanically, she looked
into her little purse : four or five small pieces of silver.
The hotel bill was not paid. Nick had laughingly
turned out his pockets before her the evening they re-
turned, and with a kind of naive pleasure they shared
what he found in them. She had a few dollars of her

266 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

own, and had spent that immediately on some neces-
sary trifle; and he was going to the bank when he
went out.

To Europe. Why, in the name of a blind Provi-
dence, should he go to Europe?

And what should she do with that sixty-five cents?
Anyone can spend a million dollars wisely; the judi-
cious investment of sixty-five cents is a graver prob-
lem.

And she wanted Nick, with a simple hunger, that
ache for the accustomed thing which is the substantial
half of loving. Against him her pride could not arm
itself, because it could find no memory for a weapon.
Even to the last, when they had made the laughing
division of what he had, she could recall nothing that
had not been kind.

"What shall I do?" she asked herself. "I must
live." Must she? Yes; if she had said that once to
get her own way, she still could see the other side of
the shield, and know that a privilege is also an obli-
gation. "That's our business," she thought gallantly,
"to live. That's what life's for. To do the best we
can with it. Even if we don't know what to do, we
ought to do something. When you get through you
know at least what you shouldn't have done. And
Nick's not dead. Was it something I did? Was
it "

The blindly inimical forces of the world, bent on
self-preservation only, dimly apprehended earlier, re-
curred to her mind. She felt them now. The world
had suddenly, violently, projected itself in physical
form between them — brick and mortar, walls and
gates, and people, endless people, armedly neutral,
holding them apart, stolidly, unconsciously, indiffer-
ently. No one would help her, and "who is not for me
is against me," as a wise man has said. She had

THE MAGPIE'S NEST Tloy

chosen to stand alone; she had her choice. Let her
bend her proud, graceful neck and say to her lawless
heart: "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." That was
what was left her. Every tradition cried it to her;
and she had learned now what it meant to defy tra-
dition.

"And yet, I will not," she said inwardly.

So, since there was absolutely no other thing to do,
after her last nickel had gone for her fare, and the
last editor had said, with casual courtesy, "Perhaps
later," she went to see Mrs. Merrick.

Standing before her wavering mirror, unfastening
her white collar preparatory to dressing for the street,
a week later, she stopped suddenly and looked, long
and curiously, at the slim black figure imaged there,
white aproned, capped even. She pulled off the cap
hastily. "I didn't wear a cap then," she reflected
whimsically. "This is the badge of civilisation, which
means servitude. Now, is it all the same? I wonder
if I've dreamed all the rest, and this is not New York,
and I am seventeen. No, I could never pass for seven-
teen now. How the wheel turned; it made me dizzy,
I suppose. Full circle. Tcmt passe, tout casse. Is
the rest true? For nothing ever palled on me, except
nothing. I liked things, anyway. Too much — well,
perhaps. The Laodiceans rule. But I must hurry."

She got into her tailored frock, shabby now, and a
little out of fashion, but still smart in essence, and
went out to see if the sun still shone. She had hardly
looked on it since coming here, and Mrs. Merrick
nagged her to go.

It shone ; she walked quickly to the Avenue, turned
down and followed it to the Arch, turned back and
eastward, doubling and twisting, pleased with the old
and quiet streets.

"Gramercy Park," she said to herself, seeing it,

268 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

strangely, for the first time. "H-m-m," and she sniffed
delicately. "This was what I didn't get." She loi-
tered around the square and found herself later in
JSJineteenth Street, following the sunny side. "Now,"
she said to herself suddenly, stopping to gaze, "I've
found it. That wasn't a front door opened ; it was the
cover of a novel of the most exclusive flavour."

But it was only a front door, a wide, fan-lighted
door, above a high stoop, and out of it a bent old
butler in a worn black livery had thrust his meekly
scornful white head, to look up and down the street,
blinking at the afternoon sun. Whatever he sought,
it was not Hope; he popped back again, like a turtle
in its shell, and the gentle slam of the door seemed to
be directed at her. He had looked over her head, and
she laughed to herself.

"They do exist," she reflected. "I wonder, now, if
some venerable Aunt Euphemia, who remembers
Washington Irving distinctly, and has no living rela-
tives except an asthmatic lapdog, lives there, a little
dried-up old kernel in a big, dim shell. She takes the
Post, and drives in an open carriage with a matched
pair and an apoplectic coachman — I've seen her second
cousin sometimes, coming out to take the air on the
Avenue, with her maid and her butler and her stick
to help her across the pavement to the carriage. And
I might be living in Mars for all she knows of me, or
ever could know ; our lives are as remote ; we could as
soon touch each other as the poles. How disturbing
Heaven will be to most of us when we get there; I'm
afraid Aunt Euphemia will call it 'very mixed,' and
regret her pew at St. Simeon Stylites, or wherever it
is. I'd rather be me, after all." She walked on, still
smiling. Her conceit pleased her, though it was far,
far from the truth.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 269

For she had been looking at Grace Sturtevant's
house.

Hurrying, for she had been out longer than she
should, and still dreaming, she walked into the once
familiar portals of the hotel before she realised she
had transgressed and taken the main entrance. So
she almost ran toward the elevator, not wishing to
turn back. Someone called to her, but she did not
hear, and then a boy in buttons touched her respect-
fully on the sleeve. The clerk was leaning over his
desk, holding out two letters to her.

*'You haven't been in for a long time, Mrs. Angell,"
he said. He had never seen her, capped and aproned,
in the upper hall ; he remembered her first stay there,
a winter ago. "This came quite lately, though. You
told us to hold your mail ?"

*'Yes, I did; thank you," she stammered slightly,
took the letters, and vanished. For one mad moment
her heart had leaped to her throat. But neither bore
Nick's writing. One was in Mrs. Hamilton's hand;
the other unfamiliar. She opened the last one first,
standing in the middle of her room and dropping
gloves and envelope on the floor.

"Evelyn Curtis." She had almost forgotten Evelyn
Curtis, having lost her home address.

Sitting on the bed, she read the letter a second time,
very carefully, as if there might be a trick in it some-
where.

*T have looked and looked for you," it ran, "but no
one could tell me anything; Mr. Kennard said you
had been ill and never came back, and I am leaving
this letter here as a last resort; they said you might
call. I hope you get it soon. Those pictures of yours
— I am almost as excited as if they were mine — I
meant to do something with them before I left, but
you know I went home unexpectedly. So I took them

270 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

to the Bancrofts'; they get out millions of children's
books, and I met Mr. Bancroft abroad. He said they
were so quaint, so original, and he has a series of
stories he wants done right away, and he said maybe
he could arrange to have them run in the Planet, or
syndicate them. I am sure he can. The stories, too
— can't you furnish the stories to go with them?
Come and see me at once, when you get this ; I'll take
you down to see him. Make him bid up ; he wants the
stuff, and I told him you were getting quite well es-
tablished ; I hope it is true. Do come soon." And so
on, to the same fortunate purport.

"Soon ?" But instantly. She thrust Mrs. Hamilton's
letter into her bodice unopened, and rushed madly
down the hall, waving the one from Evelyn, seeking
Mrs. Merrick.

Mrs. Merrick, in the linen room, looked up at her
cyclonic entrance with an attempt at severity.

"Goodness, I'm glad you're back," she said. "Ida
is sick again — I believe that girl likes cramps — and if
you just would, I wish you'd take her place this eve-
ning. There are four rooms waiting to be done right
this minute and — what? Oh, now, Mrs. Angell, I
don't see how I possibly can let you go off again. I
know, but "

Hope talked her down by sheer lung power, and
began to explain joyously.

"Well, isn't that lovely?" said Mrs. Merrick, her
kind, homely face lighting with enthusiasm. "Go on,
I'll do the rooms myself. Course I knew you'd go
sometime, but I hoped it wouldn't be soon. I've been
glad to have you."

"What should I have done without you?" said Hope,
conscience-stricken. "I will take Ida's turn."

"You will not," said Mrs. Merrick firmly. "Never
keep good luck waiting, child. Run along." She put

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 271

aside an armful of white things to kiss Hope, who
submitted politely. Touched by the disinterestedness
of these two women — Evelyn and Mrs. Merrick —
Hope went back to her room, and remembered Mrs.
Hamilton's unopened letter as she put on her coat.

It was largely made of good wishes and inquiries.
Hope had not written for long, and it seemed Mary
Dark also wondered at her silence ; several letters had
gone unanswered. Mary was still with Mrs. Hamil-
ton, but might not be much longer ; an exasperatingly
inconclusive bit of information. There was hardly
any other news, except of the children, and the growth
of the town, until the last paragraph. That was evi-
dently an afterthought. That pretty Emily Edgerton,
Mrs. Hamilton had heard, or read, was being married
during the month, and in New York ! The bridegroom
was of New York, and since Emily could hardly be
said to have a home — why not, Hope wondered, and
conjectured an open break — the wedding was to be at
the home of one of the bridegroom's relatives. Per-
haps Hope would be there! At that simple supposi-
tion Hope looked at her cap, lying on the floor, and
grinned. She recalled the day of the month with an
effort. Emily must have been married yesterday.

And Conroy Edgerton, quite as certainly, must be
in New York.

Even so, he seemed a million years away, with the
old mad days, when she wanted the world and he was
going to give it to her. Mad days, and merry. Had
she been like that? Quite seriously she went to the
mirror; for when one remembers old days one feels
no longer young. And she thought she must wear a
different face now, unrealising how much she was the
same — the girl who had helped one man to play with
fire; the woman who had walked through it to reach
another she wanted.

272 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

And here was Conroy Edgerton just around the
corner, in at the death again, in a sense. She seemed
destined to be shipwrecked at his feet. He had been
so kind that other time. What would it be like to
see him again?

Not difficult, at least. For all this was New York,
and Mrs. Hamilton had naturally credited him with
no address; he was no needle in a haystack. By no
stretch of the imagination could one consider him a
needle ! Knowing New York a little, and him a great
deal, she would have wagered her new-found luck on
her ability to find him. If he hadn't already started
home, or if he wasn't stopping with some other tire-
some relative. She quickened her pace up the Avenue,
as if he might make good his escape before she reached
Thirty-fourth Street, and Peacock Alley. Having
once thought of seeing him, homesickness, loneliness,
swept her towards him with the force of floods break-
ing bounds. The revolving doors let her into the huge
brown stone hostelry with a seeming of added haste,
impelled her on past the rows of gorgeous, somno-
lently watchful women and plump, prosperous men,
till she came to the desk. She wrote her name on a
card — "H. Angell," as she was wont to sign her draw-
ings, quite forgetting that Edgerton might not recall
her by any such cognomen — with a line asking if he
could come down — and waited.

The close, warm, scented air made her sleepy; she
leaned on the arm of her great carved and gilded chair,
her face shadowed by her hat, studying with an im-
personal eye the people who quested past her. So it
was she looked on Edgerton first, hardly realising his
identity, as he came toward her down the strip of red
carpet, looking over her head. He was just like all
these other solid, comfortable, middle-aged men ; there
were thousands of him. Until she stood up, directly

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 273

under his nose, and held out her hand and called him
by name; then he was different to her. Because he
was kind still; his shrewd eyes, after one moment's
amazement, still enshrined her — and were sorry for
her! She had never known before that he had always
been sorry for her ; she had not known that he was so
clever as that. Her heart, which had felt as if con-
stricted by invisible hands since Nick's vanishment,
seemed to escape and unfold, and her frozen sensibili-
ties melted. He was speaking, enfolding her gloved
hands in his warm cushioned clasp.

''Your he said. "Did you know I'd been looking
for you ? And here you are by accident — I just came
downstairs to meet a man — no, was that your card?
By Jiminy, I didn't recognise it. Come in here where
we can talk." He swept her away and commandeered
a headwaiter, who bestowed them in an obscure, palm-
sheltered alcove and stood at bland attention.

"But I've only a minute," said Hope. "I don't want
to eat. Give me — oh, give me some tea," she said
desperately, though it was six-thirty. "I've an engage-
ment with a girl right away. And I must go back to
work."

"What work?"

She spread her pretty hands, unspoiled by a mere
week's labour, on the cloth.

"I am a maid at the Alhambra Hotel."

This with an air so demure that a wiser man than
he would never have guessed she was taking in, at an
eyeful, all the resplendency of his diamonds, the fine-
ness of his linen, the creased newness of his suit, and
mischievously pelting this brutal fact of her manual
toil at them, his insignia of ease — like a small boy's
snowball aimed irresistibly at a silk hat.

"What?" Now he appraised her in turn, for con-

274 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

firmation. "I don't believe it." But he did; he be-
lieved that hat of hers. "Good heavens, why?"

"Oh, bad luck, bad management. Better than starv-
ing."

"Or " He stopped.

She shook her head.

"Not that. Expensive, but I like to own myself.
I suppose you'd think you might have been to blame ?"
Some such matter, truly. She said cryptically : "How
we all flatter ourselves! I think I never had a better
friend than you. H I have had no success, it was not
for lack of the best counsel. Besides, perhaps I have."
A childish pleasure in "saving it up" made her defer
her very new news. "Why don't you tell me some-
thing about your own self ?"

"Emily's married," he said, with doting regret. "Got
a good fellow. They sailed for France this morning;
biggest suite on the Mauretania. Now, look here,
Hope, we've got to change things a bit for you."

"What shall we do?" she asked, gravely mischie-
vous. "We failed once, you know. You don't want to
try it over again?"

She studied his face; the complexity of his feelings
made it worth while, but she could barely restrain a
shout of mirth. And then, unexpectedly, she per-
ceived a hint of the old feeling, a tenderness, a baf-
fled reaching for something elusive, for the wraiths of
dead dreams. He put his hands in his coat pockets,
though the table was between them, and gave her a
look of sheer appeal.

"Do you want to?" he asked slowly.

"No, no." She felt very small, and remorseful.
"I oughtn't to plague you; forgive me, you were al-
ways good. It's too late — it was always too late "

"It was always too late," he nodded. "But, God,

i

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 275

how I used to wish it wasn't. Say, Hope, where's
your husband ?"

"I don't know," she repHed truthfully. "And you ?"

"My wife got a divorce. It was a kind of a jolt,
but I'm glad now. The fact is — But here, now, are
you going to let me help you?"

"You're just the same," she said. How restful, how
refreshing, to find someone just the same. "But look, I
don't need it. I've got everything already — everything
anyone can give me, I mean — read this ; look here."

She thrust the letter into his hands excitedly, poured
a torrent of explanation over him while he tried to
read it, and finally made the matter reasonably clear
to him, more or less in spite of herself.

"I knew you'd make it sometime," he beamed. "I'm
going to order some champagne — sure, you've got to
celebrate. Buy a Paris hat, and a trunkful of new
dresses."

"Do I look so passee as that?" she queried. "Very
well, I will — to-morrow. Now I have got to go
and see the girl who wrote the letter; I looked for
you first, Con. Oh, indeed I must; but to-morrow I
will do as you say, anything; I know this is mean of
me, but good-bye." She pushed away her untasted
cup of tea, and rose, drawing on her gloves.

"Why did you come ?" he asked aggrievedly. "Now
I've got to eat my dinner alone. Where shall I
find you to-morrow?"

"Still at the Alhambra. Oh, I came because —
because I was alone, too. And I wanted to tell some-
one my news." She pulled down her veil and hur-
ried out, bumping into a gold laced page at the door,
because more than her veil obscured her eyes. All
this wealth, this soft luxury, was what she had fore-
gone from Edgerton, but she was not thinking of that.
"It was Nick I wanted to tell," was her thought.

CHAPTER XXVII

BUT if she had spoken it in his ear, he could not
have heard.
At the office, where he made the rounds to
say good-bye to the men he knew, their cordial re-
grets would have touched him if he had been able
to bring his head down from the clouds. They noticed
that, too ; Everson, the manager, a man of dry speech
and a quick eye, pricked him neatly.

"You needn't look so damned glad to be going.
What ? Yes, you do ; you look like a new bridegroom.
And you won't even give us a chance to congratulate
you."

"Rats," said Nick, reddening furiously, and laugh-
ing. "Want me to burst into tears? Say, I do hate
to leave."

"Well, come and have a drink, anyway," Everson
offered. Men liked Nick. "There's a long dry spell
ahead, if I know weather signs. Never mind the
denials."

"Don't think I've got time," said Nick dubiously.
"I've got to go to the bank, and then a call to make."

"Take you round in my car," said Everson, putting
on his hat. "Drop you wherever you say; I've got
to go uptown anyway. Anyone else on?"

Several of the other men took the invitation, but
they left these in a few minutes at the cafe. Nick
got into the motor with Everson.

"East Nineteenth," Nick requested, after they had
left the bank. "This is your new car, ain't it? Got
the new motor in it ; really 1 Let's try it."
276

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 2.-]^

Everson had been driving himself; they shifted
seats, and Nick took the wheel.

"Smooth," he said admiringly.

Everson told him it was still on trial in a sense,
having come from the shop but the day before, and
was the first to leave the hands of the experts.

"Sorry we're not on a speedway," he added. "You
could show me a little of your fancy driving. Could
you do a hairpin turn around the Arch?" They were
just passing it.

"Climb it, if you like," said Nick, looking quite
capable of carrying out his threat. "Watch me spurt
— no, wait till I get in the clear a minute."

Now they were in lower Fifth Avenue. It was more
than usually free from traffic; Nick tailed in behind
another motor, let it gain on him for a block or two,
and then risked the ire of the traffic policeman, if one
were looking, by jumping to about twice the rates
the regulations allow. He had calculated to a nicety
on that car ahead; that is, on its proceeding soberly
at its fixed pace. Which was where he miscalculated.
Without even a warning explosion of the engine, it
swerved a little towards the curb, skidded, and stopped
within its own length.

Something, Nick inferred in the moment's grace
allowed him, had gone seriously wrong with that
car, and the driver had simply jammed his brakes.
Nick tried to turn out and pass, but there was not
enough leeway. He yelled to Everson, who jumped,
and braced himself, hearing the peculiar grinding crash
of collision just before he was aware of himself sitting
on the pavement against a lamp-post and looking about
curiously for his own hat, which was still on his head.
In the impact, and in Nick's final effort to get by,
Everson's car had twisted a little sideways, with a

278 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

bucking motion that just stopped short of overturn-
ing, and Nick had been unable to hold on.

Everson, uninjured by some freak kindness of the
God of Wheels, came running up. Everybody in the
world, in fact, seemed to be charging down on Nick
in mad excitement; people fairly sprouted from the
paving stones. The owner of the car in front forgot
his grievance and was the first to offer a hand. Sev-
eral distracted bystanders began inquiring loudly for
a doctor.

"Thanks, Tm all right," said Nick, and got to his
feet to prove it. He felt a little light-headed from the
shock — that lamp-post had been very much in the way
— and there was a good deal of dust on his clothes,
but beyond that nothing. *'Glad I didn't kill you," he
remarked apologetically to Everson, who swore in a
grateful and relieved manner and shook his hand.

Then a policeman interrupted, with heavy authority.
Their names, places of residence, who owned the car ?

*T do," said Everson hastily, complying with all
three requests. He understood instantly Nick's look
of frantic appeal; Nick had told him he had a train
to catch, to say nothing of that call. Might be a
very important call. Everson's heart was not so dry
as his manner. "My friend here is from Buffalo;
I was driving — you don't need him, do you? My
car; I'll answer for the whole thing; here's my card.
Grab a taxi," he added to Nick, in a quick aside.
"Send me a line from Chi. Sure you're all right?
Fine. Good luck."

He engaged the policeman again ; Nick vanished, not
so much through as around the crowd, and picked up
a predatory taxi that had been hovering hungrily
near.

It was only five minutes to Grace's, and she was at
home.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 279

"Do I look a wreck?" he asked her, refusing to
shake hands. "I wonder if Skene could brush me
down a bit — of course I'll tell you all about it, but I
feel like a tramp now."

Skene, the butler, took instant charge of him, and
brought him back shortly, entirely presentable, to
Grace's impatient presence.

"I suppose it took an upheaval of nature to bring
you here," she said, but smilingly. "How can you
tease my curiosity so?"

"Honest, I was on my way here," he assured her.
"And I was in such a hurry I smashed Everson's car
doing it. There was a lamp-post, too; I believe I
broke that with my head. Feels like it. Can you see
a goose-egg? Oh, it wasn't anything really; we took
the tail-lights off another car for a souvenir, and I
came on in a taxi."

"What flattering eagerness. You've really been a
very bad friend, Nicko. I haven't seen you for — how
long?" She could have answered her own question,
almost to an hour.

"You'll think me worse," said Nick cheerfully, get-
ting to the point in his usual style. "I came to say
good-bye."

"Good-bye?" Grace echoed vaguely, looking at him
with her clear grey eyes dilated. "Why? What have
I done?" So near she came to betraying herself.

"You? Why, you haven't done anything. It's me;
I'm going away. You know, I told you about it be-
fore." He put his hand up to his head, as if un-
consciously. "I took that Chicago job. Rising young
business man. You ought to be proud of me. Can't
lecture me any more for lack of ambition."

"Oh," she said, and then, regulating her voice care-
fully, "I shall miss you."

"I'll miss you — and the kiddies," he assured her.

28o THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"And the " His voice thickened, a dull flush rose

to his face.

"What is it?" She leaned forward, sensitive to
every shade of his expression.

"I — don't know," he muttered. "Going away "

Then he swayed in his chair, and with arms thrown
out a little, pitched forward, with his head on her
knees.

She did not scream, nor start : Grace had good stuff
in her. And her slim body held more strength than
one would credit. Putting her arms beneath his, she
lowered him to the floor, put a cushion under his head,
and rang for Skene and her maid.

"A doctor — yes, Doctor Lempriere, quick," she
commanded the terrified girl. "Tell him a surgical
case, probably concussion. Life and death. Go — don't
stand gaping. Help me lift him, Skene. To my own
room; it's the only one on the ground floor."

Between them they managed it, and laid him on
her own dainty bed, his boots making a dusty streak
on the white lace counterpane.

And there he stayed, unknowing, if not uncaring,
while Hope waited and hardened her heart to go on
alone.

Dr. Lempriere, entering — they got him without de-
lay— cast a quick look around even while he was ex-
amining Nick. He had not stopped to ask what was
the matter ; as a doctor, he felt it his business to know.

"Clever girl, Grace," he said at last, his deft fingers
still exploring Nick's hair. He had known Grace
absolutely all her life, having assisted at her entrance
thereto. "Concussion; you guessed it. How did you
get him here? You say he had a motor accident?"
He was removing Nick's collar now.

"He came — he walked in. Talked to me." She

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 281

spoke shortly, gripping her hands together, holding
on to herself. "How could he?"

*'It doesn't always show immediately," he assured
her. "I've known a man go four hours with a broken
neck and not know it. Same thing with concussion.
Now we can't move him "

"I don't want him moved," she cried passionately.
She had him now, by a very miracle, just when he was
about to leave her. He was hers, at least so long as
he was helpless.

"Well, then, we'll have to spoil your pretty room
for awhile," returned Dr. Lempriere calmly, looking
about at the muslin curtains, the shining array of silver
on the inlaid dressing-table, the rose-flowered chintz
chairs. "That nurse ought to be here by now; I told
Skene to 'phone. And where's that hot water I asked
for?"

He set Grace herself running errands for him, see-
ing with a keen professional eye her need of some
immediate distraction. And before he went away,
leaving Nick to the efficient ministrations of a trained
nurse whom Grace detested on sight, he drew her out-
side, the despoiled chamber and soothed her with as-
surances that convinced her more than himself. With
a constitution like that, he said, while there was always
danger, Nick had all the odds in his favour. He
merely needed quiet, absolute quiet. Grace had better
save her strength for his convalescence, when she
could really help; which was the doctor's gentle way
of bidding her keep away from him now.

Of course they could not keep her out always ; not in
her own house. Though he could not recognise her —
they kept him under opiates for quite a week — she had
to look at him sometimes, to watch him wandering
in that dim borderland between here and the vast
reaches of space the eye cannot pierce. And when

282 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

his lips moved, she tried not to listen, and did it de-
spite herself. She was afraid of hearing the other
woman's name, as she knew she had heard her voice.

To the end of her days Grace never quite forgave
herself that lie which uttered itself so spontaneously.
It had come to her like a weapon which in a moment
of stress is seized unconsciously and discovered in the
hand, later, with bewilderment. As a weapon, she
used it to guard the door to that quiet room; it was
more for him than herself. But later, when she
realised everything, she realised that she had wounded
her own honour most with it. But even for that she
would never have cared, if she could have felt she had
served him. She tried to think so ; she had to. Who-
ever that other was, she could have no rights. Nick
would have told her, surely — had he come to tell her?

That small consolation was torn from her with his
first conscious word. Strangely, it was on the very
day Hope stood weaving fancies before Mrs. Sturte-
vant's door. The butler, when he put his head out
into Hope's view, was looking for the doctor, who
delayed. Nick was waking; the nurse thought he
might be conscious. And he was strong enough now
to be permitted to use his faculties. His unconscious-
ness had been prolonged by narcotics because when at
the end of ten hours he first revived he had immedi-
ately tried to rise and dress. He wanted to go some-
where, do something — at once. So, each time, they
simply gave him more of the drug. And Grace, after
seeing him so long in that terrifying stupor, had for-
gotten every wish she had ever had save to see him
look at her again with clear eyes and hear him speak.
She thought she could desire nothing more now; the
old pain was swallowed up in this oppressing fear.

She had her wish — poor Grace! "Which of us,"

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 283

asks the master satirist, "has his desire or, having it,
is satisfied?"

The doctor seemed long in coming. She slipped into
the sick-room quietly. The sound of her light step
on the bare polished floor seemed the signal for his
awakening; perhaps he knew it was different from
the firm purposeful tread of the nurse. In that vague
region of the mind where our unformulated thoughts
rise and dissolve ere seen, he may have had some
wild hope.

Grace went to the bed-side, stooped, and put her
hand on his. The nurse, too late to restrain her,
held a finger to her lip. And then Nick opened his
eyes, looked at her with a sort of surprise, and asked :

"Where is Hope?"

"Where is what?" asked Mrs. Sturtevant, in a soft,
tense voice.

The nurse motioned her again for silence, quite un-
heeded.

"Hope — where is she?"

"She's coming," the nurse interposed quickly, and
whispered to Grace, "Agree with him, whatever he
says."

"Have you sent for her?" Nick insisted, speaking
directly to his cousin, and trying to lift a hand to
his bandaged head.

"Yes," she said steadily. "Go to sleep, Nick;
she'll come."

"That's— good."

"You mustn't talk any more now," the nurse inter-
posed authoritatively, and poured out a draught for
him.

Grace went out. She felt dull, tired, rather old.
She had not strength to be glad, in the first reaction.

If she could have found Hope she would have sent
for her. Since there was nothing else to do, she did

284 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

not much mind doing it. After all, what did it mat-
ter? She did wish Nick to be happy. Anything to
have him well again. She could be jealous, indeed,
but not petty or vicious. But she did not know even
this strange woman's name. She heard that, too, when
he was strong enough.

"What did I say ?" he asked her inevitably. A mere
human curiosity prompts that question to everyone
who has known delirium, or wonders if he has known
it; a desire, perhaps, for an unguarded glimpse of
one's very self. Then he read in her face that he
had said something; and he was also chafing under
inaction, burning with anxiety for Hope. The horror
of having left her alone, penniless, in the city whose
dark depths he knew too well, was goading him.
"What did I say?" he insisted, with weak emphasis.

"You asked for someone," said Grace. "I am not
sure of the name — Hope?"

"Did I?" He was quiet, and then looked at her
imploringly. "Where is she?" he begged.

"But who is she?" asked his cousin gently. "I do
not know anything. You never told me." This with
faint bitterness.

"She's the woman I'm going to marry," said Nick.
"I meant to tell you, Grace, as soon as it was all ar-
ranged. And now I don't know where she is." There
was anguish in his voice.

"What is her name? Where does she live?" asked
Grace calmly. "I will write or telephone her. Cer-
tainly she should be here."

"Her name is Mrs. Angell. She was at the Nassau
Hotel; but I had the nurse telephone there, and she's
gone. I can't find her." Grace could have wept for
very shame; for his face betrayed too clearly what
she had done to him.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 285

"It won't be hard to find her, surely," she soothed
him. "I will send to inquire."

"I know — send Updyke to me — you know his ad-
dress?"

She knew him slightly ; he was a friend of Nick's of
long standing. She promised; cheered him with as-
surances of the ease with which Hope must be found;
assurances Updyke, a young man of happy disposi-
tion and no cares, reiterated when he came. Surely
they would find Hope.

But they did not.

The assurances wore thin even before Nick was
able to leave his bed. It was as if she had tried to
cover her tracks.

Grace found his proximity gave her little happi-
ness. Perhaps it was this she needed, this daily,
hourly sight of his indifference to her, his calm and
slightly egotistic friendship — the friendship of cous-
ins— to kill her lingering, patient hopes. At the last
she would have given him Hope, she would have given
him all the women in the world, to take that cloud from
his face, lend the old light to his eye. But "who
among us has his heart's desire," or can give another
his? It came to this, that, even asking nothing, she
could get less.

Hope had not tried to cover her tracks at all. Noth-
ing was more natural than that she should send a por-
ter from the Alhambra to bring her baggage to her,
when good fortune enabled her to redeem it — she
had gone to Mrs. Merrick with no more than what she
walked in — nor than that he should not have been
especially noted at the Hotel Nassau. Her things
were removed ; that was all they knew. Anyone might
have taken them; EHjah might have called for them
in his chariot of fire for aught they recalled. She
did leave a letter for Nick.

286 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

But Carter is not an uncommon name. By another
diabolical turn of ill-luck someone else got the let-
ter, made nothing of it, and it went into a waste-bas-
ket. Another letter she sent to his office. That was
forwarded to Chicago, and wandered about discon-
solately in the limbo devoted to such poor strays until
it was frayed and dingy. It reached him just about a
year later.

There were nights, in the weeks of searching, when
Nick walked in hell. He used to remember, with such
horrible clearness, just how much money Hope had
had; those little pieces of silver.

Doggedly he went back to work ; there was nothing
else to do, and he needed the money, to look for her.
He used to look at the faces of women in the streets,
in the subway, everywhere. He stared, and never
smiled. It was her distinction, at least, that he never
even thought he saw her. Chicago was given up. How
could she have got away from New York ? So Spring
passed, and Summer.

Grace Sturtevant was haunted by the memory of
that shy, desperate voice asking for him over the
insensate telephone. She never dared to tell him.
Sympathy for him became a veritable dagger in her
breast; her own suffering, dulled now into the resig-
nation of the intelligent, quickened understanding. It
did not need his grave, unhappy eyes, his face thinned
and hardened, to show her his heart. She knew just
what emptiness was there.

He never told Grace much. No one can honestly
tell his or her own love-story. Those glowing figures
who carry the banner of love down the long corridors
of time are not flesh and blood; they cannot die be-
cause they never lived ; they are only symbols. Their
story is every lover's story — but no one's. Love de-
nied, love fulfilled, love betrayed; each of a dozen

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 287

phases has its symbolic lovers to interpret it. They
are like vessels fashioned of crystal by great artists
to hold a mighty wine.

But we lesser creatures hold up our little earthen
cups for the pouring, and are filled. If we treasure
the cup afterwards, poor shard that it is, we also pre-
fer to guard it from the smiles of the unbelievers.
All love stories are sublimely silly; but love never is.

So Nick, for fear of being maudlin — he knew now,
to his own confounding, that a man can weep if he
must — and of putting into words the sheer want of
Hope, said little. What did she look like, Grace
asked; and he brought up a picture of her, sitting
rather hunched up, in childish fashion, over her draw-
ing-board, rubbing her cheek with a charcoaled finger
— funny, and heart-rending. He said her hair was
"light," in that large way of a man. He saw her again,
brushing it, with a book propped on her knee, and her
blue satin slipper dangling from the tip of an arched
foot on a chair rung. He simply stopped. The more
because it was not a lover's vision of her he had,
something to be rhymed and sung and flaunted with
the bravery of inexperience in the eye of an envious
world. It was the husband's tender, more homely
portrait, which he carries next his heart, and hides
with a profoundly casual air. The lover may fancy
his lady's perfections so obvious that none can miss
them, short of imbecility; but every true husband
knows that only himeslf can see his wife as she de-
serves to be seen.

Was it then still so keen? Grace sighed inwardly,
half glad that she was yielding herself to apathy;
she thought her soul too desolate to feel more than
a dying pang, unrealising but that it might be but
going fallow, for a richer fruitage another season.
She gave up the attempt, and rang for tea. The butler

288 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

brought it promptly, on a tray laden with old silver
and egg-shell china ; Grace, bending above it, her slim,
gracious hands busy, her fine head delicately stooped
as if with its weight of pride, her crown of pale
gleaming hair, and the soft shifting flow of her olive
satin gown, made a picture of sheltered refinement
that took Nick's eye in a curiously impersonal way.
Sheltered, that was it; safe, guarded, delicately clad.
And how was Hope faring ? He rose abruptly ; it was
more than he could bear. Oh, he would not wish
Grace other than sheltered ; he would wish all women
safe now for the sake of one; but it was too sharp to
look on and think of closely.

"No, thanks, I won't have any," he said. "May I
go to the nursery ? Am I rude ? I beg your pardon,

Grace Hemlock, if you like," with a poor effort

at a joke. "Couldn't I take a biscuit to Maddie ?"

"Of course; you'll find her there. The three of
you!" Grace smiled faintly, but did not offer to go
with him. All that was over.

Madeline greeted him with a scream of joy, re-
proved instantly by her nurse as unladylike; clutched
the biscuit with one fat hand, and offered an exchange
with the other. While he was convalescing she had
had him so much she tyrannised over him entirely
now, and gave him the half of her kingdom. Never
a new toy could be accepted entirely without his ap-
proval; he had to put her to bed when he happened
in at the right time, sing to her, tell her stories, read
her picture-books. It was a picture-book she was
thrusting on him now.

"Wead me," she said, climbing on his knee and
dropping the book in process.

He just caught her from diving after it head fore-
most, brought her back by the slack of her pink romp-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 289

ers, and established her with the book on her pudgy
lap.

"Nice book?" she inquired anxiously.

"A bee-yu-tiful book," Nick told her. "Lefs see
what's inside it."

"Babies," said Madeline. "But — dey have no muv-
ver!" She seemed equally distressed and astonished
by this unnatural circumstance, and spread one dim-
pled hand down on the opened leaf to point out the sad
fact, thereby making the view difficult. Nick lifted
it, opened his mouth to read the first verse — it was a
series of jingles with wreaths of plump, solemn, pre-
posterous, lovable imps prancing about the stanzas —
and said softly, "Lord Almighty!"

"Wead me," demanded Madeline peremptorily.

"What?" said Nick, rather as if he did not under-
stand the familiar request. Then, to her vast indig-
nation, he set her down abruptly and carried her book
to the window. "Hope!" he said again, to himself.

There was her name down in the corner — on the
title-page, too, above the publisher's imprint — incred-
ibly plain, like something one has mislaid, and finds
again in the simplest and most obvious place. And
the very pictures. Those funny little cherub heads,
that used to pop up out of her portfoHo. She had
names for a dozen of them. He never could tell
them apart, unless by their attitudes, but she declared
seriously that he must be very stupid; their disposi-
tions were entirely different. She could tell their life
histories — lived in the moon — to prove it.

Madeline was fairly storming at him now. He paid
no heed at all, tore the fly-leaf out of the cherished
book, and dashed out.

"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Sturtevant, lift-
ing her cheek from her palm as he re-entered the draw-
ing-room. A wail followed him from the nursery.

290 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

"Nothing, nothing at all." He looked at her with
a bright, unseeing eye. "Everything's all right, I

think — I have to go — I'll tell you if it's true "

He went out Hke a man drunk on new wine, and left
her staring, while Maddie's shrieks of rage and dis-
tress echoed unheeded.

CHAPTER XXVIII

WITH so much crowding on her to be done at
once, with. success, as it were, sitting on the
doorstep until the house should be dusted
for it to enter befittingly, it was some time before
Hope had time to cast her accounts with life, and ask
herself how her balance stood, for good or evil. She
had to go home first, and yet more immediately she
had to see Evelyn Curtis. That had been the first
and most necessary step, and was not neglected.
Their reunion was almost incoherently rejoicing; no
one could have been more generously enthusiastic
than Evelyn. Hope offered her the rights of an agent,
but Evelyn would hardly accept; she named a fee
almost nominal.

Hope took her to dine with Conroy Edgerton the
next night, to honour her new contract. She came to
terms with the Bancrofts, tentatively, earlier in the
day and in haste. Excellent terms for a beginner, too,
and Mr. Bancroft suspected her naive manner for a
pose, but proceeded to farm out her work so they
should not suffer. Everyone was pleased, except
possibly Edgerton at having a gooseberry for dinner.
But he enfolded Evelyn with a large geniality, ordered
champagne generously and toasted the contract and
the Paris hat Hope had bought to please him, and
prolonged the dinner to a supper after a vaudeville
theatre.

*T thought we should have a long talk," he said, a
little regretfully, in an aside, as he helped Hope on
with her cloak. "However, you'll probably hear all
291

292 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

the news." Hope, adjusting the symbolic hat, missed
his slightly guilty look. "You might write to me," he
suggested. "You know I've got to go back to-night.
If I come to New York again — I may soon — I'd like
to see you."

"You can always find me through the Bancrofts,"
said Hope. "Certainly, write. You don't know how
odd it has been to see you again. Do you remember
the night we set the prairie on fire?"

He looked like a schoolboy "caught out," and she
burst out laughing. That night they had never
thought to sit down so impersonally to a reminiscent
evening.

"Plenty of water under the bridge since then, Hope,"
he said, and, his strangely youthful, ruddy face tak-
ing a deeper tinge, added, "Do you think I look much
older?"

"You?" She went on laughing. "You'll never
grow up. Con. I'm an old woman alongside you."
What tricks Time can play, that she could take such
a tone to him! "What did you say about news? Is
there anything new?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Edgerton, and sighed.

"Marriage and death and division" had indeed
wrought with his life. It seemed rather pathetic to
Hope; she had a fellow-feeling for him.

He put the girls in a cab, and they saw him standing
on the curb as they rolled away, a fine, substantial
figure of a man, a credit to his tailor, his cook and
himself — but alone.

Hope indignantly recalled that sympathetic sigh she
had devoted to the touching picture, weeks later.

But then she was half across the world again, and
talking to Mary ; for yet more water had flowed under
the bridge. When the wheel of life did begin to spin
for her, it went at breathless speed. The letter call-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 293

ing her home came in immediate answer to her first
jubilant announcement of good fortune. Both her
father and her mother wrote. They were growing
old, they said. They needed to say no more. She
set to work feverishly to do what must be done im-
mediately, and transmuted her first check forthwith
into a railway ticket.

But there would be many more checks. She was
really "made"; the welcome accorded the little syndi-
cated stories, which the Bancrofts found a market for
immediately, was an absolute assurance of that. Those
were Mary's stories, and Hope had to go and see Mary
and learn what her share in them was to be ; but after
all it was the drawings that counted most. For the
rest of her life Hope could "walk delicately"; she
could have as much purple and fine linen as might be
reasonably required by one of her stature; in short,
she had her passage booked for the big liner whence
Edgerton had once surveyed her cockle-shell making
for the open sea. She was rather glad ; the excitement
of the struggle for daily bread had lost its first keen
edge. It had come just at the right time ; not too soon
nor too late.

Mary she saw more or less by the way; the only
break in her journey. Mary, rather more vivacious
than of old, and delighted to the verge of extravagance
at the sight of her returned prodigal, come on her
without warning, just off the train.

"You — you little viper," she exclaimed, almost up-
setting the tea-table in a rush to embrace her at sight
of Hope's mischievous eyes peeping in at her. Mrs.
Hamilton had hastily smothered an outcry of surprise
at the door to permit of her carefully planned entry.
"Heavens, did you come on wings? You got my let-
ter— not that you deserved it, leaving me in ignorance

294 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

so long. Take off your hat." She proceeded to divest
Hope of her outer garments by friendly violence.

"I got no letter," said Hope, submitting laughingly.
"I got nothing; I am going home."

"For the fatted calf— I know."

"Yes," Hope began, and stopped. That was too
good a guess. "Why, how did you know ?" she asked.

"Know what?"

"That I had 'arrived,' in a becomingly small way, of
course. I haven't told you. I was always just a pane
of glass to you; but this is too much. Tell me, or
I'll have you burnt for a witch."

"And I'll have you stuffed for a Strasburg goose!"
retorted Mary, wiping the tears of enjoyment from
her eyes. "Con told me, of course; wrote me in-
stantly."

"Ah, he did? What — what's the meaning of that?
Does he write you everything instantly? Oh — oh —
Mary, where did that come from? Was it for that
you saved him from me?" On her third finger Mary
wore an enormous emerald. Hope had never seen
anything so wonderful ; she gasped over it, and rolled
her eyes to heaven. "Is it really, really true?" she
demanded, when she could command words.

"Yes." Mary was her old, rather mocking, good-
humoured, impenetrable self. "So now you see why
my most unworldly and righteous uncle helped me!"

"And you called me a viper!" said Hope, adding
that to the recollection of her misplaced pity for
Edgerton's loneliness. "Mary, are you going to be
happy ?"

"Yes, and I shall make him happy, too," said Mary
calmly.

She could; she could make any man happy, if she
chose. There was that in her would hold a man.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 295

divert him endlessly, and leave him always a little puz-
zled and wholesomely fearful.

"It's time someone was good to him," said Mary
again, her manner suddenly changing into a curious
mixture of protective tenderness and belligerence —
the eternal woman. "He is rather a dear, you know,
Hope. Well, I wrote you to come for the wedding.
Will you? And "

*T should say," said Hope, "that he's always been
pretty good to himself! Well — and what?"

"And will you kindly stay away afterwards?" said
Mary. "Or promise not to steal my husband, if I
let you come?"

"Well, of all things What do I want with your

darned old husband? I've got one too many now. I
meant to say — when I've been home for awhile, Fm
going to see what I can do to dispose of that one.
Perhaps you can advise me?"

"Didn't you know ?" cried Mary, sitting upright with
a pained and slightly apprehensive expression. "Is it
possible you have never heard?"

"No; I haven't heard anything. What do you
mean?" Hope felt alarmed despite herself.

"About Ned— poor Ned."

Hope shook her head, unable to speak.

"He died three months ago," said Mary simply.

"Ah!" said Hope sharply, and sat down, feeling
strangely befooled, played with, and weak. "If I
had known! So it was all for nothing!"

But she did not explain under Mary's gentle press-
ing; and they avoided the subject, with a little shiver.

Over Ned's death Hope was unable to define her
true feelings — some sorrow, but only for the futility
of his life and its going out.

There was, at least, no shameful sense of relief.
She thought, with a shudder, of the essential brutality

296 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

of the rigid system that tried to compel all unhappy
creatures in like bonds to her own to look only to
death for help. How it must corrode even the finest
natures; and under what strange masks morality has
been miscalled and defamed.

Well, she could give all her pity to herself now.
What was it she had applied to Edgerton:

"Time turns the old days to derision,

Our loves into corpses or wives,
And marriage, and death, and division,

Make barren our lives."

Yes, marriage, too; for the married closed off their
lives into a little walled garden, where more than two
could hardly walk with comfort. Mary's garden
would be very beautifully tended; it would probably
include an orchid house. Mary herself, so dark and
white and with her gold-grey eyes, would become such
a setting; she had always been faintly exotic, hardily
exotic, one might say. How well she would set off
diamonds in that dusky hair of hers and on her quick
white hands. Edgerton had chosen very well for him-
self. H it was he who chose ! There was no disloyalty
in that thought. Mary would not be meanly calculat-
ing, but she had a fine sense of the fitness of things.

"Yes," said Hope, when they had returned, after
many pauses, to that topic, "you'll be quite a great
lady now. Will you ask me to tea and rehabilitate
me socially? What a joke!"

"I will," said Mary, her eyes sparkling. "You shall
yet patronise the whole town, with my able assistance.
You're a born devil, Hope, and the salt of the earth,
and I love you. How soon will you come back to me ?
Do you return to New York?"

"I don't know yet what I'm going to do," said Hope

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 297

"Mary, have you ever known what you were going
to do?"

"Why — why — " said Mary thoughtfully, "no, not
if you mean that literally. None of us do. We are
not gods, you know?"

"Not even knowing good and evil?'^ asked Hope.

"Oh — good and evil!" Mary paused a long time.
"It's not so simple as that, I don't think — you can't
talk of it as if it were, say, sweet and sour! Maybe
Adam and Eve did know good and evil after they ate
the apple; but observe, they never explained the mat-
ter to anyone else. So might you 'if you could win to
the Eden tree, where the four great rivers flow,' but
you can't. No, we are not gods — and I must say, in
this age, we ought to be! I can't think of a time in
human history when every man and woman has been
so carelessly entrusted with the charge of his own
soul ! It's rather a glorious experiment for humanity,
but a little alarming."

"Is it?" asked Hope the radical. "Why should I
be more alarmed at having charge of my own soul than
at giving it in charge of someone else? If I don't
know my right hand from my left, do I know enough
to pick the guardian of my soul?"

"Oh, you Shut up," said Mary candidly. "I

wasn't talking to you ; I was talking to that non-exist-
ent creature, the Average Woman. I know you'll up-
set my theoretical apple-cart as soon as I get it nicely
filled with platitudes. Consider this, as an Average
Woman, you'd never have been allowed to choose that
guardian — the guardian would have been chosen ages
before you were born — up to a century ago "

"And my Good and Evil would have been as much
a matter of chance as it ever could be now if I came
down to flipping a nickel for decisions," Hope pointed
out. "Only then I'd never have questioned results.

298 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

which perhaps I might now, and so may learn some-
thing."

*'My dear," said Mary, "you'd have benefited by the
wisdom of the ages, embodied in law and custom."

"Fine," said Hope, "if nothing but wisdom were
embodied in law and custom."

"Ah, what are we talking about ?" said Mary. "You
are only trying to tell me you're grown up. And I
knew it, the moment I looked at you a second time.
And that is all you mean to tell me. Isn't it? No,
I am not asking. Plague take her ; who is there ?"

Mrs. Dupont it was; the news of Mary's engage-
ment was still fresh, and she had been deluged with
callers. Her surprise at seeing Hope was slightly lu-
dicrous, since it was evident she was uncertain how
great a degree of cordiality was called for. After
she had congratulated Mary in a moment of confusion,
she turned affably to Hope and asked:

"You have been married, too, haven't you, since
we met?"

"Oh, once or twice," said Hope, and dropped her
eyes demurely.

Mary coughed slightly, and with extreme gravity
said:

"WhatVe you done with them all ?"

"Poisoned them," said Hope lugubriously. "Awful
nuisance, don't you think? They do get under foot
so.

To her surprise, Mary turned suddenly to Mrs. Du-
pont, with that touch of studied impulsiveness she
could make so fetching, and dropped their little bur-
lesque.

"Hope is a widow, Bessie," she said. "Perhaps you
never heard that Ned Angell is dead? I knew you
would be sorry. And you must congratulate Hope,
not me — " smiling slightly. She went into details.

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 299

Here was something Mrs. Dupont could grasp; to
Hope's great surprise, she found genuine sympathy,
if not great comprehension of anything but material
details, in this woman, with whom she had never been
able to exchange a spontaneous word in the old days.
There was something sincere about Mrs. Dupont, a
certain bonhomie. Well, at least, she was one of those
people who help one to appreciate and enjoy success.

"I shall have some gossip to carry about; I'll be
very popular for a day or two," she said in parting.
"Sorry you're not in town long enough to come over
and see me. I shall insist on it when you return. I'm
going to see Cora now."

"And tell her," added Mary. "She'll thank you."

They laughed, to the bewilderment of Hope, to
whom Mary said later:

"You're even with Cora, anyway. She weighs quite
two hundred and fifty now."

"She never did anything to me," said Hope.

Mary shook her head hopelessly.

"But at least," she said, "you're humanised. You'll
never have right sense, of course, but you can go
through the motions. You made Mrs. Dupont like
you! But you'll never, never be an Average Wom-
an. What a pity!"

CHAPTER XXIX

NO, she did not yet know what she was going
to do, not even on a day in Autumn when
her visit home had extended to several months.
It was to find out, if possible, that she was stretched
out quite by herself, prone in the grass a half-mile
from the new ranch-house her father had built since
her last visit home, arraigning her soul and weighing
her life.

She had gone out to meet life as a brave adventure,
and life had taken her captive and led her blindfold,
through strange and devious ways, here to her start-
ing point. She, that would have, her will, saw now
that life made beggars of the best of us, and that we
can do no more than ask graciously, saving our pride
so as not to cry for things denied, or, worse, for things
granted. If there was any sense in it at all, any
meaning, beyond that, it was past her understanding.
Ready-made explanations for bargain-counter minds
one found at every street corner, but she could not
make them fit her individual soul, and it stood naked
before her to be judged. So, seeing it on the one side
and the great universe on the other, she felt she could
only laugh at the disparity, and let it go in search of
a better arbiter. Never having judged another, she
could not do it for herself.

Having made nothing of it all, save amazement at
the absurdity of her own actions and wonder at the
inevitableness of them, she opened the gates of memory
to all she had striven to forget for sanity's sake. Be-
ing dead, Ned's memory took on a seeming of un-
300

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 301

reality; in a sense, he had never been. Oddly, she
could find no great regret fop anything. "Things are
as they must be," she remembered the words gropingly,
"and will be brought to their destined end."

So her destiny awaited her still. The days when
desire should fail were far from her.

Nay, destiny awaited no one, but stood always by
one's side, so that one went neither to it nor from
it, but with it. It walked with her here, on his wide
stretch of golden grassy plain, as it had gone with
her through the thronged streets and brought her to
the one among five million she should choose to love.
That was fatalism, perhaps; but a healthy fatalism;
it avoided brooding, and invested all things with a
quality and significance beyond their intrinsic value.
As it had brought Nick to her, across the world, be-
fore either of them was awake to its purpose, and let
them drift again for years until they had grown to
understanding, when they were led again to look
on each other's faces, so it had taken him from her.

By what agency? She could think of it now with-
out that surge of revolt, of wild demanding, which
made reason a mockery ; though she loved him no less.
That he was dead she still would not believe. He
had merely gone away — something much less ex-
plicable— to Chicago? to Europe?

The impossibility of his having done botH these
things smote her on a sudden. So positively had she
been told, her dazed mind at the time actually accepted
one statement as reinforcing the other. Now they
made each other absurd. There had been something,
something unexpected, like that episode which threat-
ened so menacingly down at the shore, and dissolved
into nothing when confronted boldly. A word, a look,
might have removed it, if she but knew the cause.
And after all, she had not fought, as she promised

302 THE MAGPIE'S NEST

she would. She had left it all, and gone away weep-
ing, like a child in a dark room. Destiny, if it had
a sense of humour, might be chuckling sardonically
now over her easy discomfiture. Women, she thought
disgustedly, gave destiny good cause to laugh. They
never did fight back; they simply sat down and cried
foolishly over any misadventure. A man got up and
went on. When women learned to do that, to throw
away their luxury of despair, to cease taking morbid
pride in their own fragility, they might also come
near finding themselves liberated from many more
palpable inequalities. They needed the lesson of cheer-
ful old Sir John of the ballad: "I am a little hurt,
but I am not slain !"

Well, it was time to "arise and fight again." She
obeyed the thought literally, and flung out her arms
in a gesture of gladness. She would go back and claim
from her glittering city some of its promise, go on
with her life, still follow the unknown as her father
had. Find Nick, if she could. But if that might never
be, she saw her life enriched through him still.

She might have asked Edgerton to help her find
him, before she left New York. He would have. But
it would have struck her as a little unkind, because
of the things she did not know. How little we ever
know!

In the light, crystalline air her vision was sharp-
ened like her wits. Very far away, so far that not
the faintest murmur of sound came to her from its
thunderous progress, she saw the express from the
East crawling across the face of the prairie, a line
of black with wavering plumes of smoke floating
pridefully backward. There was a station, a mere
water-tower garnished with a stately name borrowed
from overseas, within sight of the hill above the
ranch-house. That was not very near, for things with-

THE MAGPIE'S NEST 303

in sight are not near on the prairies. The sight of
the train roused her to activity by an unconscious sym-
pathy; she began walking homeward, to meet it —
though with no such thought. But to see her going
steadily, with that quick light step under which the
grass bent and sprang again as to a small wind, one
would have thought she knew the train was bringing
her something. Her face was eager, her eyes alight.
But again, if she had known, she would have sped like
Atalanta. For now Destiny, having wearied perhaps
of attending her wilful, stumbling course, was bring-
ing her heart's desire to her.

Aboard the train, Nick, sighting the water-tower,
saw instead the gates of Paradise. And whether he
really won to them or not, there are few who may
even see them. For Hope, she had always said, and
still maintained, that the earth was very good, and
Paradise could wait its turn.

THE END

PS Paterson, Isabel (Bowler)

8531 The magpie's nest

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